How Watson Works

Originally Published: February 16, 2011

Link: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/113291/20110216/watson-jeopardy-robot-eric-nyberg-cmu.htm

Eric Nyberg knows a thing or two about Watson, IBM's super intelligent computer competing on Jeopardy! and why the robot has owned the classic quiz game show.

Watson, which is equipped with question answering technology, has taken Jeopardy! by storm by dominating his opponents, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. At the end of the second day of a three day competition, Watson has $35,734 while Rutter and Jennings have $10,400 and $4,800 respectively. The competition will conclude tonight as Watson and his competitors Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings will play one last entire game of Jeopardy!, and add their cumulative scores.

The winner will get $1 million. IBM has said it will donate their winnings to charity, while Jennings and Rutter will donate half of their winnings.

Nyberg, a Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor, led a team of researchers at the university's Language Technologies Institute, to assist IBM in the development of the Open Advancement of Question-Answering Initiative (OAQA) architecture and methodology. Two of Nyberg's CMU students even worked on Watson directly as interns this past summer.

"I'm satisfied with what we've seen on TV," Nyberg said. "I think its representative of Watson's capabilities."

Nyberg, who once got a chance to compete against Watson himself, says the robot has definite strengths and weaknesses. Despite what people watching at home might believe, the robot isn't perfect. Watson, which is made up of 90 IBM Power 750 servers using 15 terabytes of RAM and 2,880 processor cores, is at its best when the clues are easier.

"You have to remember Watson is fundamentally different from humans. If I know an answer, I can buzz in and I have a few seconds to retrieve it. Contestants will do this. Watson will not buzz in unless it has the answer. By the time it has buzzed in, it already has a high-confidence answer. Where Watson is dominating is when the clues are easy, it can get a high-confidence answer quickly," Nyberg said.

Whereby humans may take a few seconds to process a question and the clues, if Watson knows the answer, it's almost automatic. With all of its processing CPU power, Watson can scan two million pages of data in three seconds.

However, Watson is not the perfect machine. "When the clues are hard to understand or it doesn't have good resources, it comes up with answers you and I would never give. It doesn't dominate, it still has weak spots," Nyberg said.

Yesterday, Watson screwed up on the final Jeopardy! question and show its weaknesses. The answer was, "This city's largest airport is named for a World War II hero; its second largest, for a World War II battle." The question was, "What is Chicago?" Both Jennings and Rutter answered correctly, while Watson answered, "What is Toronto?" While there are U.S. cities named Toronto, they are not large enough to have two airports.

David Ferrucci, the manager of the Watson project at IBM Research and someone Nyberg has worked with extensively, gave multiple reasons for the odd screwup. He said Watson downgrades the significance of category titles and since "what U.S. City" wasn't in the question; it probably didn't know it had to be in America.

Also, Ferrucci said Watson was likely confused because there is a city named Toronto in the United States and the Toronto in Canada has an American League baseball team. Ferrucci was pleased with how much Watson bet.

As far as Watson's next frontier is concerned, IBM and Nyberg say it could be in healthcare. In fact, IBM has already begun working on Watson based healthcare applications.

"Physicians might be able to use a Watson MD when there are questions about strange symptoms with unusual conditions. You can have Watson sit through textual information about what treatments there are and what kinds of patients have had it. This is important. Most of the information about patients is written in free text, difficult to leverage that without a tool like Watson," Nyberg said.

Influence Of Violent Video Games Still Up For Debate

Originally Published: September 17, 2010

Link: http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/63462/20100917/video-games-xbox-nintendo-mario-influence-violent-games.htm

While the video game industry celebrates the 25th birthday of one of its landmark titles, it continues to face lingering challenges from government and advocacy groups regarding its influence on children.

In terms of technology, video games have clearly come a long way since the original Super Mario Brothers debuted on September 13, 1985. However as the hardware and software continually has evolved, many perceptions on the industry have remained stagnant. The most damning is that video games, specifically violent ones, have had a bad influence on children.

Common Sense Media, a parents advocacy group, released a study recently that said 72 percent of adults support the ban of ultraviolent video games. More than half of the parents surveyed rated the industry poorly, with 75 percent saying it does not do enough to protect violent games from kids.

"The results of this poll clearly show that not only do the effects of ultraviolent or sexually violent games weigh heavily on the minds of parents, but also that parents feel that the video game industry isn't doing nearly enough to protect kids from accessing the most ultraviolent games," James Steyer, chief executive office and founder, Common Sense Media, said in a statement.

The poll comes in advance of an upcoming Supreme Court decision. In 2005, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill into law prohibiting the sale of ultraviolent video games to minors. However, the video game industry was able to fight it and bring the case to the Supreme Court, where it will be decided in early November.

"The Supreme Court's decision in this case is going to have a huge impact on families and kids across the United States, and what we've learned from this poll is that parents want to be the ones deciding which games their kids play, not the video game industry," Steyer said.

However, academics who've studied the impact of violent video games on children are unconvinced of such an impact. Cheryl Olson, a clinical assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and author of the book, "Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games and What Parents Can Do," is one such skeptic. Her years of research on the effects of electronic games on preteens and teens led her to one prevailing thought.

"Playing video games is normal kid behavior. If you're an otherwise good kid with a balanced life with friends and you take out the trash and are generally respectful, these games will not negatively impact you," Olson said.

Instead, Olson said studies need to be done on video games' influence on non-typical kids, for instance those who are developmentally delayed. She said this kind of research could shed light of any potential impact for these kids.

"We've barely scratched the surface there," Olson said.

Scott Steinberg, video game analyst and host of the web-based show, "Game Theory," says most of the misconceptions on the industry come from an age gap. While gaming has evolved to include older generations, he says stereotyping still lingers.

"There is a generational gap," Steinberg said. "A lot of people still consider video game to be a kid's game, when in reality the average gamer is 35. Baby boomers and older still believe in the stereotype that gamers are kids. It's not intentional, it's just lingering misinformation. In the past there was a similar stigma to rock and roll and comic books."

Steinberg says the growing popularity of games like Farmville and Pet Society have permeated those older generations. Olson pointed to Guitar Hero and a number of Nintendo Wii titles as examples of family-based video games. Yet despite this, violent video games remain a hot button issue.

Olson said beyond a generational gap, the violent game influence debate has remained in place because politicians will use it as a way to get voters riled up. "Issues like parenting, bad neighborhoods and child abuse, those can't be solved in two years. But if you say something like, 'I've seen videos of these video games, they are violent and I want to protect your children from them,' you win points," Olson said.

Violent video games are no worse than violent movies says Steinberg. "This U.S. made Saw IV the number one movie in America, it's really hypocritical to take a small subsection meant for mature audiences and attempt to make the entire industry a scapegoat," he said.