The IBM Jeopardy challenge is over and a new champion has been crowned! Watson, the size of 12 refrigerators, three day total was $77,174. While Ken Jennings, known for winning 74 consecutive games, finished with a total of $24,000. And Brad Rutter, known for winning over $3,000,000 on the show, finished with $21,600.
With the prizes totaling $1.5M, and $1.25M of that going to charity this is more than the beginning of the machine apocalypse.
All jokes aside this represents a large leap forward in machine learning, language understanding, and a step forward in artificial intelligence. IBM plans to use the technology to help doctors make better and faster treatment decisions.
this is really impressive. it looks like IBM is really playing this up. here are some videos for anyone that’s interested:
http://www-943.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/what-is-watson/index.html