IBM Computer Program To Take On 'Jeopardy!' 213
longacre writes "I.B.M. plans to announce Monday that it is in the final stages of completing a computer program to compete against human 'Jeopardy!' contestants. If the program beats the humans, the field of artificial intelligence will have made a leap forward. ... The team is aiming not at a true thinking machine but at a new class of software that can 'understand' human questions and respond to them correctly. Such a program would have enormous economic implications. ... The proposed contest is an effort by I.B.M. to prove that its researchers can make significant technical progress by picking "grand challenges" like its early chess foray. The new bid is based on three years of work by a team that has grown to 20 experts in fields like natural language processing, machine learning and information retrieval. ... Under the rules of the match that the company has negotiated with the 'Jeopardy!' producers, the computer will not have to emulate all human qualities. It will receive questions as electronic text. The human contestants will both see the text of each question and hear it spoken by the show's host, Alex Trebek. ... Mr. Friedman added that they were also thinking about whom the human contestants should be and were considering inviting Ken Jennings, the 'Jeopardy!' contestant who won 74 consecutive times and collected $2.52 million in 2004."
Re:Leap Forward? (Score:5, Informative)
Parsing the questions in natural language, which is the goal here, is however very much *not* trivial. Doubly so since the clues and questions in a Jeopardy! game are usually at least somewhat obfuscated, contain puns, double entendres, etc...
Re:Leap Forward? (Score:5, Informative)
According to TFA, the machine will get its questions as machine-readable text. The other human contestants will get it as text and audio. Also, the machine will not be connected to the internet.
Re:I'd take Jennings (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Leap Forward? (Score:5, Informative)
That's the sort of thing that makes me believe that this team may be able to succeed.
When Deep Blue went up against Kasperov, who could it practice against? Nobody.
There are tens of thousands of Jeopardy! questions to go through before they start making up their own.
Well it did practice against other grandmasters, and it analyzed every game Kasparov had every played, where Kasparov went into the match blind.
Re:Leap Forward? (Score:4, Informative)
I hope it remembers to phrase its answers in the form of a question.
Trivial. Word 1 of the question is "WHO" if answer is a person else "WHAT". Word 2 is "ARE" if answer is plural else "IS". Parsing Mr. Trebek's "answer" in three seconds, as you pointed out, is the hard part.
Re:The code name (Score:3, Informative)
Alex Trebek: Yeah, it was a trick question, Mr. Connery. Why don't you pick a category?
Sean Connery: I've got to ask you about the Penis Mightier.
Alex Trebek: What? No. No, no, that is The Pen is Mightier.
Sean Connery: Gussy it up however you want, Trebek. What matters is does it work? Will it really mighty my penis, man?
Alex Trebek: It's not a product, Mr. Connery.
Sean Connery: Because I've ordered devices like that before - wasted a pretty penny, I don't mind telling you. And if The Penis Mightier works, I'll order a dozen.
Alex Trebek: It's not a Penis Mightier, Mr. Connery. There's no such thing!
Nicholas Cage: Wait, wait, wait.. are you selling Penis Mightiers?
Alex Trebek: No! No, I'm not.
Sean Connery: Well, you're sitting on a gold mine, Trebek!
Re:This is how it starts (Score:3, Informative)