Provost's Lecture Series
AI: In and Out of Jeopardy
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Abstract
What does it take to beat the highest-ranked Jeopardy champions of all time with a computer? Dr. Ferrucci will shed light on how he, as lead researcher, took on the Jeopardy Challenge. What bold research, engineering and management steps did it take to create Watson and scale it to answer rich natural language questions with precision and accurate confidence in just seconds. Now considered a landmark in AI, Watson delivered amazing results that out-performed all expectations. It did this by combining many different AI methods. But perhaps most importantly, Watson helped change the perception and the role of AI and of computers in business forever.
Biography
David Ferrucci is an IBM Fellow and award-winning AI scientist. He worked at IBM Research for nearly 20 years, where he built and led a team of over 40 researchers and software engineers specializing in Artificial Intelligence (AI). In 2007, he took on the Jeopardy Challenge – to create an intelligent computer system that could rival human champions at the game of Jeopardy. After four years of intense research and development, he and his team succeeded when Watson beat the highest-ranked Jeopardy champions of all time on national television in February 2011. Watson delivered amazing results that out-performed all expectations demonstrating world-class performance at a task previously considered well beyond the capabilities of any computer system to date. Dr. Ferrucci demonstrated how Watson can change the role of technology in healthcare and has since moved on to explore applications of AI in macro-economics and self-governing management systems.