Recently IBM completed its new Watson computer and jeopardy program, and decided to put it to the test against some of the best and brightest college students in the nation.
To watch the event, more than 500 hundred students hailing from both MIT’s Sloan Management School and Harvard Business School flocked to the Barden Building on Harvard’s campus to support three student teams from each school as they prepared to face off against Watson. The machine, a successor to IBM’s older chess program “Deep Blue”, had already bested jeopardy champion Ken Jennings before being brought against the students.
Despite police outside limiting admission, the auditorium filled up in a matter of minutes. Students from Harvard took one side, dressed in their customary crimson, and a smaller contingent from MIT seized the front center of the seats, led by a lone cheerleader in full regalia. During a practice round going on as students filed in, Watson ran the show, trailed closely by MIT (until they blew final jeopardy) and with Harvard, momentarily down a player, lagging behind. The only issue MIT had was constantly buzzing in early and locking themselves out of the running, earning them an admonishing “MIT, wait for me to call on you, this is not the hard part of the game” from the announcer as they managed to clean up the board ending the practice round with 2100 points to Harvard’s 2000 and Watson’s 9199.
Once the actual game began, Harvard took a solid lead with their third player returning, and actually managed to get ahead of Watson on several occasions, particularly once taking a three thousand point lead after a solid double jeopardy round. In the end however, it was for naught- Watson, like it had beaten Ken Jennings before and it’s forbear had destroyed Kasparov, ended up with 53601, compared to Harvards 42399 and MIT’s paltry 100 (after blowing a second final jeopardy).
The interesting thing to look at in all this is how futile it makes the effort of these students look. Despite jokes from the host that “we looked and found the best and the brightest. But they couldn’t be here today, so we have these guys”, the students who stood up on the podium Halloween afternoon were the pinnacle of players that two of the nations top universities could put forward. A computer wiped the floor with them.
So buck up Staples students- you can invest man hours, blood, sweat and tears into your applications to MIT and Harvard, and a computer is still better than you at what’s thought of as a classically “human game”. Watson is playing jeopardy today, but tomorrow, according to its creator David Ferrucci, it will be “helping diagnose medical conditions with accuracy, bringing to the physician not just the diagnosis it thinks is correct but also the evidence path that led to it”.
Everything isn’t for naught though, a robotocist and panelist at the Watson seminar Rod Brooks said that “no, the fringe groups that believe the singularity is coming aren’t right, Watson isn’t going to eat you”.
