When I think of Ken Jennings, which isn’t often (ok, ok, it’s very often), I usually think of him as the all-time longest winner of Jeopardy! – not as a comedian. Because of all of the hoopla over the IBM Watson tournament on Jeopardy! Ken Jennings is everywhere again, and his tweets better be up to snuff, especially since he had his ass handed to him by a super-machine yesterday. (Toronto, Watson? If you’d like to know how Watson came up with that answer here is a great explanation by IBM researchers.)
I recently started reading Ken Jennings’ tweets and was pleasantly surprised that not only are they mildly entertaining, they’re kinda funny, in a silly, nerdy way of course, but still. Who knew? Is he writing them himself or is he enlisting the help of someone slightly witty to impress Watson? Follow him @KenJennings and decide for yourself.
It’s strange watching a computer figure things out and react to questions as if it understood the complexities of language. Watson kicked their asses so severely, it didn’t seem like the lowly humans even had a fighting chance, even with the obvious edge of being, well, human. See the last episode of the tournament of Artificial Intelligence vs. The Human Brain tonight on Jeopardy!
UPDATE: We can sleep soundly because we’ve all finally discovered, as the IBM team has known for years, that The Matrix was actually a documentary.
Please open the doors, Hal.
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