Re:IBM Watson: Overprovisioned “Big Iron”?
by burke on Wednesday February 16, 2011 @11:08PM
(#2229701)
First off, I think it's naive to assume it would be that easy to do as well as Watson. Talk is cheap.
More importantly, though, Watson isn't /really/ about solving Jeopardy. It's a more general AI designed to provide concise answers to arbitrary questions posed in arbitrary natural language. I have absolutely no source for this, but it's probably reasonable to assume that Watson has the most sophisticated understanding of human language of any computer system to date. This is much bigger than a quiz show.
Re:IBM Watson: Overprovisioned “Big Iron”?
by gojomo on Thursday February 17, 2011 @12:18AM
(#2229881)
Indeed, talk is cheap. But no other team was even given a crack at this, nor have I heard of any research groups trying (and failing) at similar trivia tasks. Maybe we'll see that now.
More importantly, though, Watson isn't /really/ about solving Jeopardy. It's a more general AI designed to provide concise answers to arbitrary questions posed in arbitrary natural language. I have absolutely no source for this, but it's probably reasonable to assume that Watson has the most sophisticated understanding of human language of any computer system to date. This is much bigger than a quiz show.