Special Jeopardy event starting tonight

[Mudcat]

It has indeed turned into something akin to racing a car against a couple guys on foot. Not particularly interesting nor significant.

 

[Matty]

Bullshit challenge. You can see that both guys are going crazy cause they're unable to work the buzzer.

The geeks in the crowd don't seem to care that this is borderline-unwatchable and unfair. They're only paying attention to their stupid machine.

Meh.

 

[Matty]

GO MANKIND WITH A BASEBALL BAT

 

[Mudcat]

At least tonight's show will be a whole game so it probably won't be as much of a big IBM commercial like the last couple.

 

[Matty]

IBM does deserve the publicity in my opinion. Cool-ass tech company that was able to reinvent itself once they got pushed out of the PC market. That said,

FOK WATSON

 

[Mudcat]

IBM got pushed out of the PC market? (he types from his Thinkpad)

No, I don't know. I'm sure you have basis for that statement. I don't know about stuff like that.

What they have done regarding Jeopardy is actually pretty amazing. I said earlier it was not significant - but it is. To have so much data that can be sorted and accessed with such speed and accuracy from those kind of non-computerish clues - it is kind of mind-boggling. It really does feel like the beginnings of artificial intelligence as opposed to just calculations.

It just does not translate to great TV viewing at this point. I can think of ways it could be tweaked to make it better but whatever - I doubt they will do it again.

 

[MonkeyF0cker]

Their market share was enormous years ago, Mudcat. Not so much these days.

 

[MonkeyF0cker]

The technology really has a lot to do with machine understanding of language composition which indeed does pose a significant barrier to AI. Once the machine has the capability of comprehending what the question is actually asking, querying a database or the web for the answer becomes trivial.

 

[Matty]

Machine translation is still at the lolz level and will probably remain there for decades.

 

[MonkeyF0cker]

I'm sort of surprised that IBM doesn't incorporate that technology into a search engine page. Although, perhaps (and probably) they are working with companies like Google to create and help refine search algorithms.

 

[rito]

GO MANKIND WITH A BASEBALL BAT

excellent movie

 

[choo]

IBM sold their share of the pc market to lenovo in 2004.

 

[fiveteamer]

IBM still does big business leasing equipment

 

[Matty]

They have a shitload of revenue streams now. They're just not selling mainstream computers.

FOK WATSON IN THE TERAFLOPS

 

[mcbaseball10]

What time and channel is Jeopardy on these days?

 

[Matty]

ABC, 7:30 Eastern

 

[Mudcat]

We got a game today so far.

 

[Matty]

This is awesome. Jennings needs to bet it all. COMMON!