Hacker News Reader

Comment by jimmyjim | Hacker News Reader

I would think as soon as it computes an answer. Of course there is a penalty for getting an answer wrong, so it can't be pressing the button all the time. But the PBS documentary I think hinted that it will be a sent a signal to know what amount to wait before reading aloud an answer.

That said, I wish the engineers would have implemented OCR technology into Watson so it could see the TV screen, decipher the text question, and understand it -- instead of directly being fed the question. It would have given Watson a nice little title of being'complete'.

View on HN

What he means is that you aren't permitted to buzz in on Jeopardy until the host has completed reading the question and the buzzers are activated. Perhaps Watson is spamming the 'answer' button from the moment he knows the answer, or perhaps they let him cheat by sending him a signal when the buzzers become activated. Given that the process of buzzing in to answer a question is a large part of the strategy of the show though, I hope they aren't letting him cheat in that way.

Edit: Failed to read the comments lower on the page. Looks like Watson plays by the same rules as everyone else, using a physical buzzer which can't be activated until the question is read and the 'answer now' signal light is activated. I know that another restriction on when to answer that Watson has is that he won't buzz in until he's confident in an answer, while human players will sometimes buzz in figuring they will be able to come up with the answer in the couple seconds between buzzing and answering.

I'd been told by a competitor on the show that timing the button press correctly was an underappreciated part of the game. If you press the button before you're allowed to (before Mr. Trebek finishes reading the question) your button is locked out for long enough (maybe a second?) that you're unlikely to get a second chance at that question. So I assume Watson wouldn't be allowed to "spam" the button.

I don't think that's relevant. No one expected Deep Blue to have a mechanical arm that reaches out and moves pieces around a physical chess board.

In the case of Deep Blue the movement of the pieces isn't pertinent to the game - if human/robot assistants moved all pieces for both players it wouldn't alter the result [except possibly in some very edge cases].

For IBM Watson playing Jeopardy against humans the buzzer reaction time is exceedingly important. The buzzer is an integral, possibly even central, part of the game.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com