It’s man vs machine tonight on Jeopardy.
You may have seen the commercials for Watson, a computer designed to take part in the popular game show. Tonight Watson will go up against “Jeopardy” champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter for the first of several episodes featuring the showdown of man vs. machine.
Made by IBM, Watson is billed as the most human-aware supercomputer ever constructed.
To reach that goal, IBM took on Jeopardy as its main sight, referring to the show as the ultimate example of displaying knowledge that requires more than just a basic formula or playbook.
So, Jennings and Rutter competed against Watson in three special episodes of the Alex Trebek-hosted competition in January. The three-day even begins today, and continues through Wednesday where scores from all three episodes
will be combined to determine if it is man or machine who wins.
The episodes were filmed on location at IBM’s corporate headquarters in upstate New York, on a specially crafted Jeopardy set.
In a sort of tongue-in-cheek response, Jennings said in a news conference, “One of the first things I thought was, ‘This time, I’m not just playing to pay my mortgage or something, or to feed my kid’s college fund, I’m actually sort of representing 7 billion human beings against our new machine tyrants.”
Although the episodes were filmed last month, there have been no leaks about who won.
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