Jeopardy! pits man vs. machine, no winners yet

By Adam Rosenberg February 15, 2011

Watch out, world. Skynet could be just around the corner. Chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov lost a match to an IBM super-computer in 1997, but the chess-playing Deep Blue has nothing on IBM’s latest artificial intelligence competitor to human dominance, Watson. Following a January test run, the AI program made its official debut on the popular quiz show Jeopardy! last night, the first of a three-night showdown between the machine and two of the shows most notable former champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.

At the end of the first round, Rutter and Watson stand tied at $5,000 while Jennings trails with just $2,000. An early success for the machine, though not a perfect performance. The AI software, which is designed to answer Jeopardy! questions in three seconds or less, slipped up on a few questions, notably one concerning J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. All of the facts in the world will do you no good when Alex Trebek is asking you to consider wizard/Muggle relations, apparently.

Recommended Videos

Watson is housed in no mere desktop PC. Instead, a powerful array of computers running on IBM’s POWER7 processors provide the lightning-quick response time and growing parade of trivial information. IBM has revealed that the AI program is housed in a cluster of 90 IBM Power 750 servers, with additional bits and pieces — “I/O, network and cluster controller nodes” — occupying 10 racks, which is the part of the machine you see on the show. There are 2,880 POWER7 processor cores in all — spread across 3.5 GHz POWER7 octo-core CPUs — and 16TB of RAM. Forget Jeopardy!… let’s see what this thing does with Crysis!

Topics

Entertainment

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Previously, Adam worked in the games press as a freelance writer and critic for a range of outlets, including Digital Trends…

Computing

I have Meta Quest 3S and this is the best VR accessory yet — it’s on sale

Kiwi Design best VR accessory Meta Quest 3 headstrap

Ahead of the holidays and some prime family time, I've picked up the Meta Quest 3S. So far, my family is absolutely loving it, and my kids are constantly bugging me to play games, explore worlds, and get virtual. Naturally, I manage the time we're all spending -- you don't want too much screen time. But regardless, every one of us ends up becoming immersed, which means spending a lot of time with the headset on. One of the biggest drawbacks of the stock setup is that the headstrap is uncomfortable, and it puts a lot of pressure on your face. That means, the Meta Quest 3S's best VR accessory -- and the Meta Quest 3, too -- is a new, custom strap.

We grabbed the Kiwi Design Quest 3-Quest 3S headstrap and it's fantastic. It's also on sale right now for 20% off. Normally $30, it's discounted to $24 with a coupon code. Why am I sharing? If you pick up a Meta Quest 3 or 3S for yourself, or you're planning to gift one to someone over the holidays, I highly recommend ordering one of these straps. It vastly improves the experience and makes wearing the headset much more comfortable. It's also easy to adjust the fit, which is a big deal for kids. You have no idea how frustrating it was to constantly adjust the headstrap for my children between each turn.

Computing

Best early GPU Black Friday deals: Save on top graphics cards now

The Gigabyte RX 6750 GRE graphics card over a dark background.

Building a PC from scratch can be a lot of fun, and with the upcoming Black Friday on November 29, it's a perfect time for you to pick up hardware. One of the most fun bits of any build is picking the parts, and for that, graphics cards are probably the most fun to pick between. That said, GPUs also tend to be the most expensive pieces of hardware that go into a desktop, especially if you're trying to aim for something in the mid-to-high-end range that can easily reach $500 or even $1,000. That's why we've gone out and collected some of our favorite early Black Friday GPU deals for you below.
GIGABYTE NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 -- $290 $350 17% off

This RTX 3060 is a great starter card for those who want to be on a budget and will handle most slightly older games pretty well at 1080p and 60Hz, potentially up to 100. It may struggle a bit with newer titles without compromises, but that's fine given the reduced $290 price point.

Computing

Nvidia just scaled down DLSS 3, and that’s a good thing

The RTX 4080 Super graphics card sitting on a pink background.

Nvidia's signature tech, DLSS 3, just got yet another update -- and although it's subtle, it actually seems like a good thing for some of the best graphics cards. The latest version, 3.8.10, bundled with the GeForce 566.14 driver, doesn't seem to introduce any major changes, but Nvidia enthusiasts noticed that it's about half the size that it used to be. Where's that difference coming from?

No, Nvidia didn't downgrade DLSS 3 -- at least not in any major way. Although this hasn't been confirmed by Nvidia itself, it appears that the company removed a whole bunch of DLSS presets and replaced them with just two. These presets make it easier for gamers to choose the type of focus they want to apply to each game.