Computing Community Consortium Blog

The goal of the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) is to catalyze the computing research community to debate longer range, more audacious research challenges; to build consensus around research visions; to evolve the most promising visions toward clearly defined initiatives; and to work with the funding organizations to move challenges and visions toward funding initiatives. The purpose of this blog is to provide a more immediate, online mechanism for dissemination of visioning concepts and community discussion/debate about them.


Archive for February 18th, 2011

 

With the Score “Computer 1, Humans 0,” Focus Shifts to Practical Uses

February 18th, 2011 / in research horizons / by Erwin Gianchandani

Decimated. Vanquished. Demolished. As you probably know by now, those are but a few of the words being used to describe how “Watson” — the IBM question-answering supercomputer system — bested its two competitors in a three-part JEOPARDY! series earlier this week.  What’s more, “Watson” wasn’t battling just anyone; the machine — with a friendly voice and cool avatar for television audiences — defeated the two best humans ever to play the game, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. “Watson” ended the two-game exhibition with a score of 77,147 USD (including a number of Daily Double and Final Jeopardy wagers that drew laughter for their highly specified form).  Meantime, Jennings notched 24,000 […]