Dreaded_Anomaly comments on IBM's "Watson" program to compete against "Jeopardy" champions tonight - Less Wrong

10 Post author: NihilCredo 14 February 2011 03:28PM

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Comment author: Dreaded_Anomaly 15 February 2011 02:52:59AM 6 points [-]

My observations on tonight's competition:

The way Watson "sniped" the daily double immediately upon taking control of the board was very interesting to me. I suspect that it was programmed with a statistical distribution of past daily doubles (this site strongly suggests that their placement is not random). Otherwise, its behavior seems inconsistent, given that afterward it went after the 200-point question in each category, presumably in order to get a better read on the qualities of each category.

Its lack of audio input led it to repeat a wrong answer, which was one (probably predictable) flaw. It had trouble with the decades and alternate word meanings, which isn't surprising given the explanation that its algorithms are based on word association. Also, it needs to read more Harry Potter.

Comment author: Zachary_Kurtz 15 February 2011 08:24:36PM 1 point [-]

this about maps with the issues I noticed. Looking forward to the next 2 days of this.