With IBM's Watson on 'Jeopardy!,' how trivial is trivia?
I am so excited right now. In the next hour, two of the greatest Jeopardy contestants of all time will square off against Watson, a computer built by IBM over the past 4+ years just to compete on the show. Even though I already know the result (the episodes were filmed awhile back) I can't wait to watch on TV. People keep referring to Deep Blue vs. Kasparov in 1997, but almost unanimously state how much more impressive this machine is. I sincerely hope that in 15 more years, people are still referring to the impressiveness of Watson vs. Jennings and Rutter.
This article from the Washington Post, though, brings up a great point about the influence of technology on us humans. As a loyal Jeopardy fan and purveyor of fine trivia knowledge, I was really moved by this article. We have heard it before, but this is living proof that the ability to recall trivia knowledge is taking a back seat to the ability to locate facts. I'm guilty of this myself as I sit on my chair in the evenings looking up answers to the questions my wife and I have randomly through our conversation. I can't tell you how many times I pulled out the smart phone last night while watching the Grammy's to check on things like, "How OLD is Bob Dylan?" Have I really caved to the laziness mentioned in this article?
The big point for us as teachers, however, lies in Petri's next-to-last paragraph, "But there is a point at which convenience ends and laziness begins. We're freeing up a great deal of mental space - for what?" For what? I really hope us teachers can answer that question, or we all may just be in for a bit of a rude awakening.
I watched the episodes of Jeopardy with the use of Watson. It was very interesting to see how well the human competitors did against the computer. I was somewhat surprised at the number of times that the computer came up with an incorrect answer.
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