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Hi all -

I just finished watching the first episode of Jeopardy this week - and if
it's not too late for you to catch this episode somewhere, it's fascinating.
And by all means, watch or record the next couple of shows!

IBM's supercomputer Watson (developed specifically for this application)
takes on the two winningest human Jeopardy players.  We get to watch
Watson's "thinking process" to some small extent by seeing his top 3 answer
choices to each question, whether or not he buzzes in first.  His mistakes
and misunderstandings are fascinating.  Alex Trebek and the folks at IBM
give a little of the background in the development of Watson, and where they
think this fits in terms of AI/language understanding in general.  Very
cool.

More on Watson below, though a quick google search will turn up tons of
other articles.  The one I'm linking to here was published before these
episodes started airing, so there is no "giveaway" of the contest results.

http://tinyurl.com/6cyh46a

Hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
-Cricket Brooks

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