Thoughts on Watson

...or more accurately, some of the idiots who commented on it.

So Watson went on Jeopardy!, took on some of its greatest champions of all time, and summarily kicked their asses. I can't really say I'm surprised that it could play well, but I was surprised by how much of a blowout the game was. Brad and Ken did what they could, I guess, but I guess Watson was playing a lot like Ken played in his original run.

While I'm surprised just at how good it was at playing the game, I couldn't help but notice that some whiners wanted the game to be more "fair". While there are too many hilariously whiny posts for me to post here (you can go read them all at the Jeopardy! message boards), the bulk of them seem to be complaining about the fact that the match wasn't fair because Watson (supposedly) had an advantage buzzing in, and that the whole affair appeared to be a three-day commercial for IBM.

My take on the whiners: so farking what?

First point, the buzzers: the whole point of the IBM Challenge was to develop a MACHINE that could play Jeopardy! against human players. Of course there's a machine that's going to press the button for it, not a human (as some of the whiners have suggested). If a human were to control Watson's buzzer, it'd defeat the whole damn point of the challenge, wouldn't it? So naturally, the playing field is already tilted. It'd be like designing a competition where Usain Bolt competed in the 100m dash against a cheetah. Swapping out Watson's mechanical button-pressing would be like weighing down the cheetah with several 100-lb weights, all in the name of a "fair competition". The programmers weren't concerned with a level playing field--if they were, they wouldn't have made the breakthroughs they have because they would've been so narrow-minded on making the games "fair".

Besides, no one was complaining when Ken Jennings was on his original run, and people were comparing his buzzer skills to a machine's 6 years ago. No game of Jeopardy!, superchampion playing or not, is truly ever a level playing field.

Who's to say these aren't also disgruntled fans who just want the humans to win? Besides, it's been proven that Watson can be beaten.

Second point, the whole "commercial" BS: did anyone not see past the point that IBM was telling us how Watson was developed? Yeah, it seemed like "IBM this, IBM that," but it's not like they were trying to sell us anything, they were telling us what Watson was, what developments they needed to make to the system to make it work, and what the concept is behind it. I think I'd be more thrown if there were no explanation as to why Watson was there or why this is even happening. I know IBM put a bunch of videos about Watson on YouTube, but I think this was for the viewers out there who didn't follow those online videos, who had no notion of what this was about.

I think these are more disgruntled Jeopardy! fans who are just sour about the fact that they're not getting a full game, or that they have a segment in a game show that has nothing to do with gameplay, or that they don't care about the potential impact that this system could have on our future. And people keep saying they're not going to watch Jeopardy! anymore after Watson...c'mon, people, it's not like Watson's going to be there for every damn show! You're going to get three humans on Thursday (teens, actually...).

Besides, Jeopardy! scored some massive ratings over the last three nights. Producers aren't gonna give a damn if this game wasn't on a level playing field.

So quit your damn whining already.