IBM Jeopardy Challenge: Is Watson the Best Buzzer Pusher Ever?

UPDATE: Ken Jennings weighs in to the Twitter discussion. Scroll down.

A quick reaction blog post after seeing the first night of the IBM Watson vs. Jeopardy Champions challenge on Jeopardy. It was an impressively close contest last night. But every time Alex called “Watson” as the first to buzz in, I wondered if Watson had an unfair buzzer advantage.

From IBM’s perspective, the problem with my perception is that it cheapens Watson’s achievement in deducing the correct answer. Instead of thinking “that was impressive” your reaction becomes: “the computer has faster reflexes than Brad and Ken.” There were a couple of times last night when you could see Ken’s frustration ... like he was ready to shout “no fair” as Watson beat him to the buzzer again.

I tweeted something to that effect last night.

@kenjennings  that’s the question mark from the viewer perspective after night 1. How much of a buzzer advantage does @IBMwatson have?less than a minute ago via Twitter for iPhone

To which IBM’s Watson team responded:

@patkiernan @kenjennings #ibmwatson can’t buzz in until a signal is given for all contestants to buzz. More about it: http://bit.ly/hoBljWless than a minute ago via web

The link brought me to an excellent blog post from the IBM team. It doesn’t convince the reader that the buzzer playing field is entirely level, but does make a good argument that there are slight advantages for the computer on some aspects of responding, and slight advantages to the humans in other ways. Watson is quick, but can’t anticipate the buzzer like Jennings and Rutter can. And Watson’s answer must be fully computed at the moment it answers. Ken and Brad have an extra second or two to think while Alex calls their name.

And this morning, confirmation that I didn’t imagine the frustration Ken Jennings was experiencing in getting to the buzzer before Watson. He weighed in on Twitter with this:

@PatKiernan IBM says: no buzzer advantage for the computer.  In practice, the humans tend to disagree.less than a minute ago via Twitter for iPhone

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