Tonight was Watson’s second appearance on Jeopardy! Watson is IBM’s new super computer experiment, designed to understand plain language and draw from its huge database to compete against the top all-time Jeopardy! champs. While Watson completely destroyed its opponents in the first game, played over two nights because of the many interruptions to bring us up to speed on who Watson is and how he came about, it completely failed in the relatively simple Final Jeopardy! clue.
The category was U.S. Cities, and the answer described a city whose largest airport is named after a war hero and its smallest airport after a famous WWII battle. The question was Chicago (O’Hare and Midway). Apparently, Watson doesn’t know that U.S. means USA or United States of America, because its response was, “Toronto.”
The IBM computer scientists, while proud that Watson won by such a large margin, must be somewhat embarrassed that their baby made such a “stupid” mistake. Some of the highest hopes for Watson are in medical diagnosis and treatment. This super computer is obviously not ready for prime time, evidenced by the blunder in Final Jeopardy! Imagine if Watson was diagnosing a rash on my arm and somehow misunderstood the input based off my description of the symptoms. While a human physician would prescribe cortisone cream, Watson might recommend amputation. Okay, a bit of hyperbole there, but IBM must be pointing some fingers or scratching their heads about now to figure out how Watson made such a simple mistake.
