Final Jeopardy (Alexandra Cooper Mysteries) - Linda Fairstein [50]
But what stories would those threads be telling? The Ogilvy team started by dissecting videos of Jeopardy games. They divided the game into the various states. They began with the booming voice of the longtime announcer, Johnny Gilbert, saying, “This is Jeopardy!” They continued through the applause, the introduction of the contestants and the host, Alex Trebek, and every possible permutation after that: when Watson won the buzz, when it lost, when the other player chose a category, and when the contestants puzzled over Final Jeopardy, scribbling their responses. There were a total of thirty-six states, each with its prescribed camera shot, many of them just a second or two long. (Davis was disappointed that they couldn’t find six more, raising it to his magical number. “If we could just get it to forty-two,” he joked, “I’m pretty sure something quantum mechanical could happen, like a tornado of butterflies.”)
Still, it was clear that unless Watson got special treatment, the avatar would garner precious little screen time. When it answered a question, the camera would be focused on it for between 1.7 and 5 seconds. And during its most intense cognitive stages—when it was considering a question, going through the millions of documents, and choosing among candidate answers—the camera would stay fixed for a crucial 3 or 4 seconds on the clue. In essence, Davis had to prepare an avatar for a series of cameo appearances. He said he was unfazed. “Watson is that ultimate challenge,” he said. “I’ve got milliseconds of time where I need to present something that’s compelling and dynamic.” He went about developing different patterns for the thirty-two cognitive states in the computer. The threads would flow into a plethora of patterns and colors as it waited, listened, searched, buzzed, and pronounced its answer. The threads would soar when Watson bounded with confidence, droop when it felt confused.
While all of this work was in progress, the Jeopardy challenge remained a closely guarded secret. But that changed in the spring of 2009. IBM’s top executives, excited about the prospect of the upcoming match, wanted to highlight it in the company’s annual shareholder meeting, scheduled for April 28 at the Miami Beach Convention Center. To prepare for the media coverage sure to follow, the computer scientists on Ferrucci’s team were ferried into New York City to receive media training. They were instructed to focus on the human aspect of their venture—the people creating the machine—and to avoid broader questions concerning IBM, such as the company’s financial prospects or its growing offshore business.
Only one problem. The agreement IBM and Jeopardy had in place was little more than a handshake. They had to nail it down. IBM, said executives, was hoping to hammer out a deal that would include airtime for corporate messaging, perhaps telling the history of Watson, how it worked, and what such machines portended for the Information Age. But once again, Harry Friedman and his Jeopardy colleagues had all the leverage. IBM needed an agreement right away. Jeopardy did not. So Big Blue got a tentative deal, pending Watson’s performance over the coming year, in time for the Miami meeting. But other than that, the negotiators came back from Culver City empty-handed, with no promises of extra airtime or other promotional concessions.
Not everything hinged on the final game. IBM hoped that Watson would enjoy a career long after the Jeopardy showdown. They had plans for it to tour extensively, perhaps at company events or schools. This mobile Watson might be just a simulation, running on a laptop. Or maybe they could run the big Watson, the hundreds