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Comment by umjames | Hacker News Reader

Much of success on Jeopardy is not just deciphering clues in the answers, but your timing on ringing in to give the question. I'd imagine a machine could get really good at getting the timing down. Does Jeopardy have a way of varying who rings in first to keep things more fair?

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Something I wrote from a previous thread. The one piece of info that wasn't in this comment is that Watson can NOT anticipate when Trebek is about to finish the question. Watson must wait until it gets a signal that the buzzer is now available, and only then can it begin the process to physically depress the button.

Remember that Watson also has to depress a physical button (the same buzzer everyone else uses). The eye to finger path for humans is about 200ms. It probably takes about 100ms for Watson to physically press the button. So Watson is about 100ms faster. But that also gives humans about a 100ms window in which to beat Watson. This means that you need to start your press 100-200ms before Trebek finishes his last word.

That's pretty good sized window for most people given you are reading the question along with Trebek. If the person who turns the light on is very consistent, I think a human who is good at this could consistently beat Watson.

Another key to remember is that there is time after the button press to think of the answer - it's a common strategy to ring in when you have a certain confidence level that you can think of the answer quickly. Watson uses confidence levels, too, but he already has a particular answer in mind instead of a vague confidence level for the whole clue.

Interesting fact: during Ken Jennings' original 74-game winning streak, he felt it was an unfair advantage he had so much experience with the buzzers. He asked the producers to allow the other contestants (competing for the first time each episode) time to practice with the buzzers, which they did.

The timing of when players are allowed to click in is controlled by a human. Someone backstage decides at what moment Alex is finished speaking and then opens the clickers. If you click too early, you get ~ 300ms delay penalty which gives the other players a chance to click in.

Click timing is indeed very important but I do not think Watson has any special advantage there.

But there's a visual cue letting the players know that clickers are open (a light flashes, I think), so the computer probably gets some notification too, at which point it could instabuzz.

> instabuzz

Nope, it has to press down on a physical button just like everyone else. Maybe it can move it's finger a bit faster, but...not much.

Not it does not have a special advantage but it also does not interface with the questions in the way that humans do, it cannot hear Alex or read the question on the screen, the questions are messaged to Watson via something akin to a text message or an email.

That’s Jeopardy. Whoever buzzes first gets to answer, I don’t see what’s unfair about that. Computers can react faster than humans, why should they be denied that advantage?

Because the challenge proposed is not about reaction times.

How so? The challenge seems to me to be all about the question whether a computer can beat humans at Jeopardy. Reaction times are a part of that.

Because it goes against the spirit of the competition. Nobody would be impressed if IBM built a machine that could simply buzz in faster than Jennings and Rutter.

Watson won't ring in until it determines it has enough confidence in its answer that it is favorable to ring in.

If it rings in every time there's no way it will win.

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