Watson

Exciting times for machine learning and artificial intelligence fans: IBM’s Watson computer versus two of the flesh bound starting tonight, Feb 14, 2011, on the game show Jeopardy. And not just any humans, I guess, but Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter (I suppose the latter is less known to non-Jeopardy fanatics.) Too bad they aren’t competing against Seth Lloyd (someone have a link to the game show Seth won?) Here is a nice Nova special on the machine and the challenge. I sure hope Arnold Schwarzenegger is in the audience so he can tell us whether Watson is a good Terminator or a bad Terminator.
Update: Here is an amusing curmudgeonly discussion of Watson by Noam Chomsky. Don’t worry Noam, I’m sure Watson won’t feel sad about all your mean words 🙂

Little Miss Bleeeeeeeeeep

Anyone else catch Little Miss Sunshine on USA this weekend? The scene where the brother Dwayne breaks his vow of silence has to be one of the longest silence bleeps of all time. Anyone know of of a longer one (for one word, not for a string of words)?