Last night was round two of humans vs. super machine Watson on the game show Jeopardy. And while round one was fairly competitive, round two was very one-sided. If Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter were a mop, Watson used them to wipe the floor with.
Very impressively, Watson got almost every question correct that it was able to ring in on. Not to mention it rang in on pretty much every clue on the night. You could almost see smoke coming out of Ken Jennings’ ears as he tried desperately to beat the mega computing beast on the buzzer.
While my viewing partner and I were very impressed on Monday night by this computer (and even rooting for it a bit) we were the exact opposite last night. It almost felt as Watson had an unfair advantage on the humans. Well, frankly it probably does. Just the sheer speed it can process a clue is impressive. It is so fast it seems automatic.
At the end of the night, it actually got the Final Jeopardy clue wrong, while the humans got it correct. However, it didn’t matter in the score as it stands now, the scores stand at Watson $36,881, to $5,400 for Rutter and $2,400 for Jennings. There is another round tonight, so we will keep you posted on this more tomorrow as well.
Impressive stuff IBM.
