Although Watson routed the humans in the first “Jeopardy” match,
its Final Jeopardy question left everyone scratching their heads.
The Final Jeopardy category was “U.S. Cities.” Watson said, “What
is Toronto?” with multiple
question marks denoting its lack of confidence. The clue was: “Its largest
airport is named for a World War II hero, its second largest for a World War II
battle.” The human players, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, both got the
right question (“What is Chicago?”),
but Watson still finished with $35,734. Jennings
had $4,800 and Rutter had $10,800.
Despite an otherwise impressive performance, Watson was soundly mocked on
Twitter for the final mistake. “The machines don’t know all. Yet,”
posted @erickohn.
The Double Jeopardy and Final Jeopardy rounds of the first game aired Feb.
15. The first
round of “Jeopardy” had been broadcast on Monday, and the second
game of the two-game tournament is scheduled for Wednesday.
Watson’s odd answer was a result of several confusing factors, according to
David Ferrucci, whose post-game analysis appeared on IBM’s
A Smarter Planet blog.”Jeopardy” category names are tricky
because they “only weakly suggest” the expected answer, so Watson
tends to downgrade the significance of the category name when calculating its
answer, Ferrucci said. If the question had included “U.S.
city” in the question, it would have given U.S.
cities more weight in its search, he said.
Watson was also probably confused by the fact that there are several cities
named Toronto in the United
States, and the Canadian Toronto has a
baseball team in the American League, according to Ferrucci. “Chicago”
was the second answer on Watson’s possible list, according to A Smarter Planet.
For more, read the eWeek article: IBM’s Watson Wins in ‘Jeopardy,’ Needs Lessons in U.S. Geography.
