[ExI] Watson On Jeopardy

[Dave Sill]

On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 4:41 PM, BillK <pharos at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 15, 2011 at 7:56 PM, David Lubkin  wrote:
> > You don't seem to have read what I wrote. The only question I raised
> about
> > Watson's current capabilities was whether it had a module to analyze its
> > failures and hone itself. *That* has been possible in software for
> several
> > decades.
>
> No, because Watson doesn't have time to do any learning or
> optimisation while the game is actually in progress. Watson doesn't
> take any notice of opponents answers. That's why it gave the same
> wrong answer as an opponent had already given.
>

According to the NOVA show, Watson does learn from opponents *correct*
answers. They showed an example where the answers were supposed to be month
names. Watson guessed wrong on the first question, but after a couple humans
answered with month names, it correctly answered one, too. I guess they just
don't have time to get feedback to Watson on wrong answers during a single
question.

-Dave
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