Final Jeopardy (Alexandra Cooper Mysteries) - Linda Fairstein [90]
Over the previous four months, since the end of the first round of sparring sessions, Watson’s creators had put their machine through a computer version of a graduate seminar. Watson boasted new algorithms to help sidestep disastrous categories—so-called train wrecks. Exhaustive new fact-checking procedures were in place to guide it to better responses in Final Jeopardy, and it had a profanity filter to steer it away from embarrassing gaffes. Also, it now received the digital read of Jeopardy answers after each clue so it could learn on the fly. This new intelligence clued Watson into its rivals’ answers. It was as if the deaf machine had sprouted ears. It also sported its new finger. Encased in plastic, the apparatus gripped a Jeopardy buzzer and plunged it with its metal stub in three staccato bursts when Watson had enough confidence to bet. Even Watson’s body was new. Over the summer, Eddie Epstein and his team had moved the entire system to IBM’s latest generation of Power 7 Servers. If Watson was going to promote the company, it had to be running on the hardware Big Blue was selling.
In the remaining months leading up to the match against Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, most of the adjustments would address Watson’s game strategy: which categories to pick and how much to wager. It was getting too late to lift the machine’s IQ. If Watson misunderstood clues and botched answers, they’d have to live with it. But the researchers could continue to fine-tune its betting strategy. Even at this late date, Watson could learn to make smarter decisions.
Though the final match was only months away, the arrangements between Jeopardy and IBM remained maddeningly fluid. An agreement was in place, but the contract had not yet been signed. Rumors about the match spread wildly on the Quiz Bowl circuits, yet the command from Culver City was to maintain secrecy. Under no circumstances were the names of the two participants to be released, not even the date of the match. On his blog, Jennings continued with his usual word games, stories about his children, and details of a trip to Manchester, England, which sparked connections in his fact-swimming mind to songs by Melissa Manchester and one from the musical Hair (“Manchester, England, across the Atlantic Sea . . .”). Nothing about his upcoming encounter with Watson.
Behind the scenes, Jeopardy officials maneuvered to get Jennings and Rutter a preview of this digital foe they’d soon be facing. Could they visit the Yorktown labs to see Watson in action, perhaps in early November? This inquiry led to further concerns. If the humans saw Watson and its weaknesses, they’d know what to prepare for. Ferrucci worried that they would focus on its electronic answer panel, which showed its top five responses to every clue. “That’s a look inside its brain,” he said. One Friday, as a sparring match took place in the Jeopardy lab and visiting computer scientists from universities around the country cheered Watson on, Ferrucci stood to one side with Rocky Schmidt and discussed just how much Jennings and Rutter would see—if they were granted access at all.
It was during this period that surprising news emerged from Jeopardy. A thirty-three-year-old computer scientist from the University of Delaware, Roger Craig, had just broken Ken Jennings’s one-game scoring record with a $77,000 payday. “This Roger Craig guy,” Jennings blogged a day later, from England, “is a monster. . . . I only wish I could have been in the Jeopardy studio audience to cheer him on in person, like Roger Maris’s widow or something. Great great stuff.” Jennings, like Craig himself, noted that Craig shared the name of a San Francisco 49er running back from the