InformationWeek reports:
Stephen Baker already knows the outcome of this week’s Jeopardy quiz-show challenge between IBM’s Watson super computer and grand champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. But he won’t say who (or what) comes out on top.
[Update: After Two Evenings it’s Watson, the IBM Supercomputer, $35,734 and the other two contestants with $2,400 and $5,400.]
. . . Author of the notable 2008 big-data-computing expose "The Numerati," Baker has spent the last year researching and writing Final Jeopardy: Man Vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything, set for release on February 17, the day after the matches conclude. . . .
According to Baker:
Watson is not that smart, but it’s very powerful. It can’t make decisions, it doesn’t really understand, and it doesn’t really think, but it can read through ridiculous amounts of data and come up with possible answers with a known degree of confidence.
It all boils down to what information it is fed. So don’t let it near Joe Nickell.
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