Putting a robot’s reputation in Jeopardy

Question: It’s the TV quiz show where the questions are answers and the answers are questions.
Answer: What is “Jeopardy”?

The long-running American show has been a mainstay of the television schedules for decades – with around nine million daily viewers. But last night’s star contestant was completely unexpected – a supercomputer, built by IBM.

The robot – which goes by the name of Watson – finished round one in a tie for first place with a real life competitor, Brad Rutter, while the other human on the panel, Ken Jennings, ended third. Both are former Jeopardy champions, to give the robot a decent run for its money – and there’s some decent money at stake – a $1 million jackpot.

Watson – who’s called after the founder of IBM, Thomas J Watson, rather than Sherlock Holmes’s sidekick – took around four years to construct and is the size of four fridge freezers. It’s been loaded with data gathered from the internet, as well as some 200 million pages’ worth of information from books, magazines and even film scripts.

In a practice session before the show, it managed to confuse Beethoven with the actor Jamie Foxx.

Its creators say it’s able to understand natural language and answer questions based on a series of complex algorithms – on a far more sophisticated level than, say, a Google search. And to make it truly competitive, it’s also been fitted with the ability to activate a buzzer.

The real skill, though, comes in the kind of nuance which – in humans – comes with understanding the question properly: researchers call it the “Paris Hilton” problem – in other words, being able to tell whether someone’s referring to the hotel chain, or the celebrity It-girl.

IBM’s Vice-President for Innovation, Dr Bernard Meyerson, told Wired magazine: “It’s not science fiction any more. Challenges like this move the needle. If you get it right, the world will be different when you’re done.”

So how did Watson get on? The robot had a strong start – correctly answering questions about a Beatles song (“Any time you feel the pain, hey – this guy – don’t carry the world upon your shoulders”. Answer: “Who is Jude?”), as well as the artist Michelangelo and the Olympic swimming gold medallist Michael Phelps.

But after the ad break things started to go wrong: repeating a wrong answer which Ken Jennings had just given, and supplying some incorrect answers of its own. And it wasn’t always first to hit the buzzer either, being pipped to the post by its human rivals.

“It can play with champions. It answered some tough questions.” IBM’s David Ferrucci

In a practice session before the show, it managed to confuse Beethoven with the actor Jamie Foxx – and when Brad Rutter joked: “I get the two mixed up all the time”, the robot failed to laugh. Another human attribute it doesn’t have: a sense of humour.

Still, on IBM’s ‘Smarter Planet’ blog, the head of the Watson project, David Ferrucci, said he had a “good feeling” at the end of the first show.

“Everybody will realize the computer is competitive,” he said. “It can play with champions. It answered some tough questions.”

The second face-off will be televised tonight. If Watson wins the million dollar prize, the company says it will donate it all to charity.

Of course, IBM doesn’t just want to build a champion quiz fiend. It says Watson is all part of its efforts to develop new products in areas like medicine, finance and customer service – virtually any sphere which involves answering questions logically and adapting a response. Fully automated call centres, anyone?