Synopses & Reviews
The thrilling story of the computer that can play Jeopardy! Alex Trebek: Meet Watson.
For centuries, people have dreamed of creating a machine that thinks like a human. Scientists have made progress: computers can now beat chess grandmasters and help prevent terrorist attacks. Yet we still await a machine that exhibits the rich complexity of human thought — one that doesnt just crunch numbers, or take us to a relevant Web page, but understands us and gives us what we need.
That vision has driven a team of engineers at IBM. Over three years, they created “Watson” and prepared it for a showdown on Jeopardy!, where it would take on two of the games all-time champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, in a nationally televised event. Final Jeopardy is the entertaining, illuminating story of that computer and that epic match.
Its a classic tale of Man vs. Machine. Like its human competitors, Watson has to understand language, including puns and irony, and master everything from history, literature, and science to arts, entertainment, and game strategy. After years of training, Watson can find the scrambled state capital in “Hair Gel” (“What is Raleigh?”) and even come up with the facial accessory that made Moshe Dayan recognizable worldwide (“What is an eye patch?”). Watson may just be the smartest machine on earth.
Final Jeopardy traces the arc of Watsons “life,” from its birth in the IBM labs to its big night on the podium. We meet Hollywood moguls and Jeopardy! masters, genius computer programmers and ambitious scientists, including Watsons eccentric creator, David Ferrucci. We gain access to Ferruccis War Room, where the IBM team works tirelessly to boost Watsons speed to the buzzer, improve its performance in “train wreck” categories (such as “Books in Español”), and fix glitches like the speech defect Watson developed during its testing phase, when it started adding a d to words ending in n (“What is Pakistand?”).
Much is at stake, especially for IBM. A new generation of Watsons could transform medicine, the law, marketing, even science itself, as machines process huge amounts of data at lightning speed, answer our questions, and possibly come up with new hypotheses.
Showdown aside, its clear that the future has arrived. But with it come questions: Where does it leave humans? What will Watsons heirs be capable of in ten or twenty years? Is it time to declare defeat in the realm of facts? What should we teach our children? And what should we carry around in our own heads?
Final Jeopardy takes on these questions and more in a narrative thats as fast and fun as the game itself. Baker shows us how smart machines will fit into our world — and how theyll disrupt it.
www.finaljeopardy.net
Review
"The book is the place to go if you're really interested in this version of the quest for creating Artificial Intelligence (AI) . . . Lively." -Seattle Times "Baker skillfully weaves the two threads of the story together, and the book contains many passages that make the reader not only assess what they think but how they think, and how they have absorbed and stored the knowledge they possess. Its books like this that remind us there is still so much we dont understand about our own brains, and that the journey of discovery has only just begun." -Culture Mob "Baker's narrative is both charming and terrifying...an entertaining romp through the field of artificial intelligence - and a sobering glimpse of things to come." -STARRED, Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
Get the eBook version of Stephen Baker's Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything a month before the epic February 2011 eventa nationally-televised face-off between Jeopardy! all-time winners Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, and an IBM-engineered computer named Watson. The eBooks final chapter will divulge the winner and analyze the match, and will be available to readers as a free update directly after the event finale airs.What if there were a computer that could answer virtually any question? IBM engineers are developing such a machine, teaching it to compete on the quiz show Jeopardy. In February 2011, it will face off in a nationally televised game against two of the games greatest all-time winners, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Final Jeopardy tells the riveting story behind the match.
Final Jeopardy carries readers on a captivating journey from the IBM lab to the podium. The story features brilliant Ph.D.s, Hollywood moguls, knowledge-obsessed Jeopardy masters and a very special collection of silicon and circuitry named Watson. It is a classic match of Man vs. Machine, not seen since Deep Blue bested chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov. But Watson will need to do more than churn through chess moves or find a relevant web page. It will have to understand language, including puns and irony, and master everything from history and literature to science, arts, and entertainment.
At its heart, Final Jeopardy is about the future of knowledge. What can we teach machines? What will Watsons heirs be capable of in ten or twenty years? And where does that leave humans? As fast and fun as the game itself, Final Jeopardy shows how smart machines will fit into our world and how theyll disrupt it.
www.finaljeopardy.net
Synopsis
The thrilling story of the computer that can play Jeopardy Alex Trebek: Meet Watson.
For centuries, people have dreamed of creating a machine that thinks like a human. Scientists have made progress: computers can now beat chess grandmasters and help prevent terrorist attacks. Yet we still await a machine that exhibits the rich complexity of human thought one that doesn t just crunch numbers, or take us to a relevant Web page, but understands us and gives us what we need.
That vision has driven a team of engineers at IBM. Over three years, they created Watson and prepared it for a showdown on Jeopardy , where it would take on two of the game s all-time champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, in a nationally televised event. Final Jeopardy is the entertaining, illuminating story of that computer and that epic match.
It s a classic tale of Man vs. Machine. Like its human competitors, Watson has to understand language, including puns and irony, and master everything from history, literature, and science to arts, entertainment, and game strategy. After years of training, Watson can find the scrambled state capital in Hair Gel ( What is Raleigh? ) and even come up with the facial accessory that made Moshe Dayan recognizable worldwide ( What is an eye patch? ). Watson may just be the smartest machine on earth.
Final Jeopardy traces the arc of Watson s life, from its birth in the IBM labs to its big night on the podium. We meet Hollywood moguls and Jeopardy masters, genius computer programmers and ambitious scientists, including Watson s eccentric creator, David Ferrucci. We gain access to Ferrucci s War Room, where the IBM team works tirelessly to boost Watson s speed to the buzzer, improve its performance in train wreck categories (such as Books in Espanol ), and fix glitches like the speech defect Watson developed during its testing phase, when it started adding a d to words ending in n ( What is Pakistand? ).
Much is at stake, especially for IBM. A new generation of Watsons could transform medicine, the law, marketing, even science itself, as machines process huge amounts of data at lightning speed, answer our questions, and possibly come up with new hypotheses.
Showdown aside, it s clear that the future has arrived. But with it come questions: Where does it leave humans? What will Watson s heirs be capable of in ten or twenty years? Is it time to declare defeat in the realm of facts? What should we teach our children? And what should we carry around in our own heads?
Final Jeopardy takes on these questions and more in a narrative that s as fast and fun as the game itself. Baker shows us how smart machines will fit into our world and how they ll disrupt it.
www.finaljeopardy.net"
Synopsis
The fun and fast-paced inside story of Watson, the computer that can play Jeopardy
Synopsis
The thrilling history and behind-the-scenes story of Watson, the computer created by IBM scientists to take on two masters of Jeopardy!, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, in a fast-paced look at how smart machines will change our world.
Synopsis
Praise for Stephen Bakers The Numerati "A highly readable and fascinating account of the number-driven world we now live in."—Wall Street Journal "A must-read for anyone who wants to understand life and business in the Google Age."—Chris Anderson, editor in chief of Wired and author of The Long Tail "An utterly fascinating book . . . [that] manages to explain this cutting-edge phenomenon and its sometimes frightening impacts in accessible prose."—Seattle Post-Intelligencer "An eye-opening and chilling book."—Portfolio "A fascinating and fast read. Baker has a knack for describing statistical techniques in ways that everyone can understand, without formulas and without jargon, while illustrating them with real-world issues."—National Review "The Numerati is a rare read, as enlightening as it is entertaining. It will change the way you look at life."—Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post
Synopsis
“The place to go if youre really interested in this version of the quest for creating Artificial Intelligence (AI).”—
Seattle TimesFor centuries, people have dreamed of creating a machine that thinks like a human. Scientists have made progress: computers can now beat chess grandmasters and help prevent terrorist attacks. Yet we still await a machine that exhibits the rich complexity of human thought—one that doesnt just crunch numbers, or take us to a relevant Web page, but understands us and gives us what we need. With the creation of Watson, IBMs Jeopardy! playing computer, we are one step closer to that goal.
But how did we get here? In Final Jeopardy, Stephen Baker traces the arc of Watsons “life,” from its birth in the IBM labs to its big night on the podium. We meet Hollywood moguls and Jeopardy! masters, genius computer programmers and ambitious scientists, including Watsons eccentric creator, David Ferrucci. We see how a new generation of Watsons could transform medicine, the law, marketing, even science itself, as machines process huge amounts of data at lightning speed, answer our questions, and possibly come up with new hypotheses. As fast and fun as the game itself, Final Jeopardy shows how smart machines will fit into our world—and how theyll disrupt it.
“Like Tracy Kidders Soul of a New Machine, Bakers book finds us at the dawn of a singularity. Its an excellent case study, and does good double duty as a Philip K. Dick scenario, too.”—Kirkus Reviews
“Bakers narrative is both charming and terrifying . . . an entertaining romp through the field of artificial intelligence—and a sobering glimpse of things to come.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review
Video
About the Author
STEPHEN BAKER was BusinessWeek's senior technology writer for a decade, based first in Paris and later New York. He has also written for the Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, and the Wall Street Journal. Roger Lowenstein called his first book, The Numerati, "an eye-opening and chilling book." Baker blogs at finaljeopardy.net.
Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction 1
1. The Germ of the Jeopardy Machine 19
2. And Representing the Humans 42
3. Blue J Is Born 62
4. Educating Blue J 81
5. Watsons Face 104
6. Watson Takes On Humans 124
7. AI 148
8. A Season of Jitters 170
9. Watson Looks for Work 189
10. How to Play the Game 210
11. The Match 232
Acknowledgments 259
Notes 263
Sources and Further Reading 267
About the Author 269