By Gabriel Perna: Subscribe to Gabriel's RSS feed
February 16, 2011 3:04 PM EST
Note: Spoilers Are Below For Those Who Have Not Seen Last Night's Episode
Even with an embarrassing slip-up in final Jeopardy!, Watson the robot decimated his game show opponents with an impressive display of knowledge and speed.
Watson, International Business Machines' super intelligent computer, which is equipped with question-answering technology, was able to overcome his opponents in the second round of the three-day event. The competition will conclude tonight as Watson and his competitors Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings will play one last entire game of Jeopardy!, and add their cumulative scores. The winner will take home $1,000,000 in cash prizes. IBM said if Watson wins it will donate the winnings to charity.
Watson ended the night with $35,734 while Rutter and Jennings had $10,400 and $4,800 respectively. Rutter and Jennings were only able to manage five correct answers out of 30 questions in the Double Jeopardy! round. Both players, but Jennings in particular, looked visibly frustrated as Watson banged out question after question. Watson's quick answering skills helped him amass the impressive lead.
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The only major slip-up for Watson actually came in final Jeopardy! round where he managed to incorrectly answer a question on U.S. Cities. The answer was, "This city's largest airport is named for a World War II hero; its second largest, for a World War II battle." The question was, "What is Chicago?" Both Jennings and Rutter answered correctly, while Watson answered, "What is Toronto?" While there are U.S. cities named Toronto, they are not large enough to have two airports.
However, Watson only bet $947 on the final Jeopardy! question, and thus it didn't really affect him. David Ferrucci, the manager of the Watson project at IBM Research, said to IBM's "A Smarter Planet" blog, several things probably confused Watson. For one, Watson downgrades the significance of category titles, and since what U.S. City wasn't in the question; it probably didn't know it had to be in America.
Also, Ferruci said Watson was likely confused because there is a city named Toronto in the United States and the Toronto in Canada has an American League baseball team. Ferruci was pleased with how much Watson bet. "That's smart. You're in the middle of the contest. Hold onto your money. Why take a risk?" Ferruci told the blog.
One thing is certain, Watson is a phenomenon with TV viewers. Monday's episode of Jeopardy! was the highest rated in four years, according to Nielsen, with 8.7 million viewers.
Part of yesterday's episode below.
To contact the reporter responsible for this story call (646) 461 6920 or email g.perna@IBTimes.com
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