Final Jeopardy (Alexandra Cooper Mysteries) - Linda Fairstein [100]
The highlight of the press event came when Jennings and Rutter strode across the stage for a five-minute, fifteen-clue demonstration. In this test run, Watson held its own. In fact, it ended the session ahead of Jennings, $4,400 to $3,400. Rutter trailed with $1,200. Within hours, Internet headlines proclaimed that Watson had vanquished the humans. It was as if the game had already been won.
If only it were true. The demo match featured just a handful of clues and included no Final Jeopardy—Watson’s Achilles’ heel. What’s more, after the press departed that afternoon, Watson and the human champs went on to finish that game and play another round—“loosening their thumbs,” in the language of Jeopardy. In these games Ferrucci saw a potential problem: Ken Jennings. It was clear, he said, that Jennings had prepped heavily for the match. He had a sense of Watson’s vulnerabilities and an aggressive betting strategy specially honed for the machine. Brad Rutter was another matter altogether. Starting out, Ferrucci’s team had been more concerned about Rutter than Jennings. His speed on the buzzer was the stuff of legend. Yet he appeared relaxed, almost too relaxed, as if he could barely be bothered to buzz. Was he saving his best for the match?
In the first of the two practice games, Jennings landed on all three Daily Doubles. Each time he bet nearly everything he had. This was the same strategy Greg Lindsay had followed to great effect in three sparring games a year earlier. The rationale was simple. Even with its mechanical finger slowing it down by a few milliseconds, Watson was lightning fast on the buzzer. The machine was likely to win more than its share of the regular Jeopardy clues. So the best chance for the humans was to pump up their winnings on the four clues that hinged on betting, not buzzing: the Daily Doubles and Final Jeopardy. Thanks to his aggressive betting, Jennings ended the first full practice game with some $50,000, a length ahead of Watson, which scored $39,000. Jennings was fired up. When he clinched the match, he pointed to the computer and exclaimed, “Game over!” Rutter finished a distant third, with about $10,000. In the second game, Jennings and Watson were neck and neck to the end, when Watson edged ahead in Final Jeopardy. Again, Rutter coasted to third place. Ferrucci said that he and his team left the practice rounds thinking, “Ken’s really good—but what’s going on with Brad?”
When Ferrucci pulled in to the Yorktown labs the morning of the match, the site had been transformed. The visitors’ parking lot was cordoned off for VIPs. Security guards noted every person entering the building, checking their names against a list. And in the vast lobby, usually manned by one lonely guard, IBM’s luminaries and privileged guests circled around tables piled with brunch fare. Ferrucci made his way to Watson’s old practice studio, now refashioned as an exhibition room. There he gave a half-hour talk about the computer to a gathering of IBM clients, including J. P. Morgan, American Express, and the pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. Ferrucci recalled the distant days when a far stupider Watson responded to a clue about a famous French bacteriologist by saying: “What is ‘How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman’?” (That was the title of a 1971 Brazilian comedy about cannibals in the Amazon.)
His next stop, the makeup room, revealed his true state of mind. The makeup artist was a woman originally from Italy, like much of Ferrucci’s family. As she began to work on his face she showered him with warmth and concern—acting “motherly.” This rekindled his powerful feelings about his team and the end of their journey, and before he knew it, tears were streaming down his face. The more the woman comforted him, the worse it got. Ferrucci finally stanched the flow and got the pancake on his