IBM's Watson supercomputer crowned Jeopardy king

Jeopardy! champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter revealed what it felt like to "represent the human race" against IBM's supercomputer Watson.

IBM's supercomputer Watson has trounced its two competitors in a televised show pitting human brains against computer bytes.

After a three night marathon on the quiz show Jeopardy, Watson emerged victorious to win a $1million (£622,000) prize.
The computer's competitors were two of the most successful players ever to have taken part in Jeopardy.
But in the end their skill at the game was no match for Watson.
Ken Jennings had previously notched up 74 consecutive wins on the show - the most ever - while Brad Rutter had won the most amount of money, $3million (£1.9m).
"I for one welcome our new computer overlords," Mr Jennings wrote along with his correct final Jeopardy question.
Search for meaning But the victory for Watson and IBM was about more than money. It was about ushering in a new era in computing where machines will increasingly be able to learn and understand what humans are really asking them for.
Jeopardy is seen as a significant challenge for Watson because of the show's rapid fire format and clues that rely on subtle meanings, puns, and riddles; something humans excel at and computers do not.

IBM machines have previously taken on chess players

 

On the night of the grand finale, IBM announced a research agreement with speech recognition firm Nuance Communications, to "explore, develop and commercialise" the Watson computing system's advanced analytics capabilities in the health care industry.
The technology behind Watson has the ability to scan and analyse information from many more resources than a human can in a short period of time, potentially aiding doctors in diagnosing patients quickly.
"We can transform the way that health care professionals accomplish everyday tasks by enabling them to work smarter and more efficiently," said Dr John E Kelly III, senior vice president and director of IBM research.
Other possible applications for Watson's technology include dealing with big sets of data commonly found in the legal and financial worlds.
Fair fight There is little doubt that Watson's win stirred up a host of emotions.
Paul Miller of the technology blog Engadget.com was moderately impressed.

“I was rooting for the humans”

Daniel Terdiman CNet.com

"It's obvious that IBM's DeepQA research programme has developed some of the most sophisticated natural language AI known to man. At the same time, Jeopardy questions aren't really that hard... all three contestants knew the answer most of the time, but Watson was just quicker on the draw.

"Of course, it's no surprise that computers have quicker reflexes, so why shouldn't Watson get to use his inbuilt advantage to the utmost? It seems like a fair fight to us."
Daniel Terdiman of news website CNet watched the final with IBM staff at an event at the company's Silicon Valley research centre.
"I was rooting for the humans," he said.
Who is Bram Stoker? Twitter was alight with praise and condemnation for the machine's victory.
The comments ranged from "Robot Apocalypse, here we come" to "IBM's Watson dominates Ken Jennings, turns attention to plotting our demise".
One user wrote: "next challenge for #Watson: The Price is Right".
The final Jeopardy category was 19th century novelists.
And the answer: William Wilkinson's "An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia" inspired this author's most famous novel.
The question - which all three contestants got right was "Who is Bram Stoker?"
Watson wagered $17,973 (£11,154) to cement his victory.
In the end Watson accumulated $77,147 (£47,923) versus Mr Jennings' total of $24,000 (£14,907) and Mr Rutter's $21,600 (£12,416).


Source: BBC News

New Norton CyberCrime Index rates your risk

by Seth Rosenblatt 

 

A new free tool from the makers of Norton attempts to quantify the real-time state of cybersecurity. It makes its debut today alongside the latest version of Symantec's all-in-one consumer security suite, Norton 360.
The Norton CyberCrime Index lies somewhere between a weather report and the United States' threat level advisory system, and Norton 360 version 5 launches with a direct link to it.

Norton CyberCrime Index (images)

The CyberCrime Index uses a statistical model based on information from Symantec's Global Intelligence Network, ID Analytics, and DataLossDB. At the top level, the CyberCrime Index takes this data and creates a number evaluating the relative risk of the threats of the day. However, it also provides a more in-depth look at active threats, threat trends, and provides advice on what kinds of behaviors are being most heavily targeted that day.
Symantec has had the statistical model and algorithm it uses in the CyberCrime Index vouched for by the University of Texas at San Antonio.
The service is set to go live this morning, so check back here later today for a hands-on update.
Symantec isn't forcing the index on any of its users, though the new version of Norton 360 does include a direct link to the service. Version 5 of Norton 360 includes the real-time threat map that debuted in Norton's 2011 consumer suites, along with all the features that were introduced in Norton's 2011 consumer suites last fall. These include updates to Norton's Insight engine, which instantly checks a file's origins and how long it's existed to determine how safe it is. The new version of System Insight also profiles your programs to determine if any of them are slowing down system performance, and automatically alerts users when a program is eating up too many resources.

Now included in Norton 360 is the Norton Bootable Recovery Tool, which will clean heavily infected systems enough to get Norton 360 installed, and can create a rescue tool on disc or USB so that your computer can be resuscitated. The backup features in Norton 360 have been improved, too, adding in automatic file encryption to the backup process. Lastly, Norton Safe Web's social-media scanner has been imported from Norton Internet Security 2011. Currently, it still only supports Facebook, though that's a good start: it will check your Facebook wall and news feeds from within Norton.

Norton 360 version 5 (review) comes with a 30-day trial and can be used on up to three computers. A one-year license with 2GB of online storage retails for $79.99. Bumping that up to 25GB of storage costs $99.99.

Cnet.com

Google unveils One Pass system for online content

Google says the 10% charge will allow publishers to customise how and when they charge for content

Google has launched a new payment system that allows users to subscribe to online content for a 10% commission fee.

The move comes after rival Apple was criticised over its payment system which takes 30% of the sale price.
One Pass will work on tablets and smartphones, as well as Google-related websites.
One Pass will launch initially in the UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.
The announcement came just one day after Apple announced new rules for publishers selling subscriptions on its iOS platform.
Apple says companies must now offer users the option to buy directly through an iTunes account, handing 30% of the price to Apple.
Previously, vendors were allowed to simply direct customers to an external website, keeping all of the profits.
On a Google blog posting, Lee Shirani, the company's director of business product management wrote: "Publishers can customise how and when they charge for content while experimenting with different models to see what works best for them."

BBC NEWS