[GLLUG] Watson on Jeopardy

[Chick Tower]

I wasn't clear on the texting of the correct questions.  They will be 
sent after clues are answered correctly, not to provide Watson with his 
(the show always referred to it with male pronouns) responses, but to 
provide him the correct responses afterwards.  That's only fair, since 
the humans hear the correct response.  One of the examples was a 
category that listed holidays and the response would be the month they 
fall in.  Watson tried to respond to the first clue in that category, 
but it was obvious he had no idea how to respond.  All he said was "What 
is holiday?"  By the end of that category, after learning the correct 
responses to the first four clues, Watson responded correctly to the 
fifth clue.

As to why computers have so much trouble with natural language, that's 
an incredibly difficult problem to solve.  We don't know how people do 
it.  It's not at all like chess, with its strict rules, restricted 
board, and one clear goal.  I think it's amazing that they could make 
Watson capable enough to compete on Jeopardy at a higher level than most 
humans can, against humans.


                                Chick

On 02/10/2011 08:24 AM, Scott Gates wrote:
> it SHOULD have to either do speech recognition or optical character
> recognition.   (or BOTH)
>
> Humans do it, why can't it?
>
> Ditto for video and picture catagories.  Receiving it's answers by
> text message is a leg up it doesn't deserve.