Instead, the game has been crippled. Watson has to press the button, naturally, but they're not going to require Watson to write out the answer with a pen, of course. And forget about audio clues, much less a picture-based Final Jeopardy clue.

I mean, if they had changed the ring-in system to work in a manner befitting a man-versus-machine match, you're telling me that wouldn't be entertaining? I would be fascinated by that match. This one was a letdown.

Watson would likely lose if this was instead of jeopardy, a simple trivia test where contestants were scored for the most correct answers. Thinking about that really calls the contest into question for me. We let the machine off the hook for things people are good at but it is not (understanding speech, reading and vision) but we make no allowance for a machine's ability to press a button faster than humanly possible. If you instead phrased the contest as "machine presses button faster than humans" it doesn't seem impressive.

Your implicit assertion that natural language processing is something "a machine is good at" really calls the rest of your post into question for me. In particular, your demand that the researchers solve half-a-dozen Hard Problems instead of only one seems mildly mean-spirited.

It's not unfair exactly, but it certainly ruins the impressiveness of Watson's ability to come up with the right answers. I highly doubt Watson's accuracy is even close to Brad or Ken's, but the buzzer seals the deal.

It's less impressive, just like a computer sorting 1000 integers faster than a human is less impressive.

edit: added "not" after the first word

From the descriptions I've read, Watson only buzzed in after it believed it had a solid answer. If it was significantly less accurate than its competitors, it wouldn't have spent the entire match buzzing in before them.

I'm afraid I don't really understand the decision to trivialize the fact that we now have a computer that can answer general-knowledge natural-language queries quickly and about as accurately as a clever person. That's a Big Deal.

For every single clue, there is an overlay showing Watson's top 3 answers, and it shows whether Watson was confident enough to buzz in. In day 2, I counted only 3 times when Watson had a confident response but was beaten to the buzzer.

None of this really minimizes IBM's accomplishment, but it absolutely means this specific presentation (Jeopardy!) lacks weight for those of us who understand what the game dynamics of Jeopardy! are. This is nowhere near as impressive a "man vs. machine" victory as was Deep Blue vs. Kasparov.

Even considering that, I don’t know what exactly makes it less impressive than Deep Blue. Watson correctly knew 84% of the answers in the second round. Looking at past games, that’s very much competitive with humans. To me, this is much more impressive than Deep Blue, even considering the fast reaction times.

Here's the thing, a tiny microchip sorting numbers at a speed that a human can barely comprehend IS impressive.

Just like flying through the sky in a metal tube, talking to someone on a different continent in realtime, or converting lightning into high-energy photons and cooking your food with it.

Well said. I must say, I don't really relate to the "man vs. machine" narrative here. Maybe it's just because I'm not taking the long view (the one in which the machines inevitably rise up and enslave us? or in which "we" become machines?), but all I see is wonderful positives: as you say, the fact that we can now fly in metal tubes doesn't diminish us as humans for not having wings and jet engines. Look at us humans: we can fly now!

I really enjoyed this article from Garry Kasparov in the New York Review of Books. Spoiler: it's [partially] about how the best chess player in the world is a really good human paired with a really good computer. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/feb/11/the-che...

So let's all join hands with the machines and sing Kumbayah ... all watched over by machines of loving grace... of course, yes, this is a medium-term view. The long-term, I suppose, probably belongs to the machines.