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http://www.technewsworld.com/edpick/66912.html?wlc=1245072364


IBM Supercomputer to Match Critical Thinking Wits With 'Jeopardy'
Wonks

By Richard Adhikari
TechNewsWorld
04/27/09 11:59 AM PT

IBM has already developed a supercomputer capable of beating human
chess champions. However, things get much trickier when a game
involves answering trivia questions as they're spoken by a human
being. The company hopes Watson, a supercomputer it's currently
working on, will be ready for the "Jeopardy" challenge sometime
next year.


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Having developed Deep Blue, the supercomputer that famously beat
out world chess champion Gary Kasparov back in 1997, IBM (NYSE:
IBM) is now working on a computer built to compete in the TV quiz
show "Jeopardy."

It will use a system based on Question Answering, a computer
science approach that tries to build software systems that can
provide accurate, useful answers to questions people ask using
natural language.

IBM researchers have been working for two years on the system,
code-named "Watson."


Not So Elementary, Watson

Watson will use semantics and massively parallel processing to
understand complex questions, decide how confident it is in its
answers, and provide links to supporting evidence.

"Being able to disambiguate meaning is at the core of this
technology," IBM researcher Eric Brown told TechNewsWorld. "The
system must be able to decide, when you input the word 'bank,'
whether you mean a financial institution or an aircraft turning or
the bank of a river."

IBM may use one of its Blue Gene supercomputers running Linux to
participate in Jeopardy. Blue Gene supercomputers are used in
higher education and government. (On a sweeter note, they're also
used by candy maker Mars in collaboration with the U.S. government
to study the genetic code of cocoa trees in order to safeguard the
world's supply of chocolate.)

IBM will probably participate in "Jeopardy" sometime next year,
according to Brown.

Still More On Technology

IBM is evaluating various data sources, including encyclopedias
and dictionaries, to create a database for the "Jeopardy"
challenge.

Its researchers are still wrestling with various technical
problems as they prepare to tackle an appearance on "Jeopardy."

"There are lots of data scale issues -- how to partition the data
to best support parallel processing and how to manage that so you
avoid disk I/O (input/output) issues as much as possible," Brown
said.

The researchers are also trying to ensure that the raw data they
collect is useful and accurate. "If all you have in your
underlying data is garbage, that's another problem, and it's still
a challenge we're working on," Brown said.
Getting Ready for Business

The technology being used in Watson could potentially be used by
enterprises to better analyze their data.

Most importantly, it will enable machine-to-machine communication
so businesses can directly query and analyze the raw data residing
on their computers.

"We're now looking at the computer as more than a calculating
machine," Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group,
told TechNewsWorld.

"When you can analyze what lies under the numbers and make
educated guesses at what the causes are, that's a powerful tool.
That capability is [critical] in order to get a response from an
artificial intelligence system without having to go through a
human," he said.
What Is Truth?

The Question Answering technology at the heart of Watson is still
in a state of flux. The language processing community has yet to
develop a clearly articulated and commonly accepted grading
framework and research methodology, according to the organizers of
Open Advancement of QA (OAQA).

OAQA is a workshop launched jointly by IBM and several
universities, including Carnegie Mellon University, in 2008.

The workshop will be part of the 21st International Joint
Conference on Artificial Intelligence, to be held in Pasadena,
Calif., in July.





Mark McKennon