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February 17 2011
Jeopardy Champion: Of Course Watson Kicked the Humans’ Butts—It Wasn’t a Fair Fight
This post is from Discoblog contributor LeeAundra Keany, a one-time Jeopardy Champion. After blowing all her winnings (a story for another blog post), she had to go back to work as an executive communications coach. In her spare time, LeeAundra has written written articles for Discover, including “Anatomy of a Brain Fart,” “20 Things You Didn’t Know About Death,” and “Can a Drunk Person Fly the Space Shuttle?“
I haven’t watched Jeopardy! in years. Prepping a little too intensely for my 2005 appearance soured me on the show. (Who brings almanacs, Shakespeare for Dummies, and the periodic table to Burning Man?) It was only Watson that brought me back into the fold. And it was an unsettling reunion to say the least. Watson was flabbergastingly good and I knew within the first few minutes of Monday’s inaugural match that he would’ve cleaned my clock. But now, even as the mighty Brad Rutter bows in defeat and heretofore unstoppable Ken Jennings “welcomes our new computer overlords” (he actually wrote that under his answer in Final Jeopardy after the last game), I for one am urging humanity to not give ...
February 04 2011
The Self-Checkout Machine of Tomorrow Will Be Smarter Than You
Can you tell the difference between Jonagold, Braeburn, and Cortland apples? Your grocery store’s self-checkout machine can–or at least it’ll be able to in the next few years as Toshiba perfects the software for the self-checkouts of the future.
This futuristic machine uses a webcam to perceive the shape and color of fruits, vegetables, and other non-barcoded items, and then it uses an algorithm to pick the best candidate within its database. Shoppers have the ability to OK the machine’s decision if it’s right, or to correct it if it’s wrong. And the scary thing? The machine learns from its mistakes. From New Scientist:
“This system gets smarter as you use it more,” says Kubota. He says recent tests showed it was able to recognise produce even when it was placed in a clear plastic bag. Still, it is not perfect yet. Naoki Mukawa at Tokyo Denki University warns that users could take advantage of the re-educating mechanism to allow the wrong identification to go through because the mistaken product might be cheaper.
That’s not the only hurdle. New Scientist found a skeptic in ...
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