Varun Arora puts on the only winter coat he's ever owned. The unseasonably warm February afternoon has grown chilly. An exchange student from the university's Qatar campus, Arora describes the weather he's experienced in Pittsburgh first as inspiration for poetry, then as sensory overload. But right now, the information systems junior has something bigger on his mind. He's rushing across campus to the Hillman Center's Rashid Auditorium to witness history in the making. (The group meeting he's missing will have to wait!) He strides into the crowded auditorium, alive with chatter and the aroma of pizza. He scans for an open seat, but there are none to be had, so he grabs a spot in the aisle.
Arora has joined other students, faculty, staff, and reporters to watch Watson, a question-answering (QA) system, compete against human contestants in the nationally televised quiz show Jeopardy!
Watson was developed by IBM with the help of Carnegie Mellon and a handful of other universities to do more than compete on a game show. IBM believes the technology will have profound effects on science, technology and business. In the auditorium, researchers from the technology giant lead the pre-show presentation and introduce the event's "rockstar": Eric Nyberg, a Language Technologies Institute professor who has been instrumental in the Watson project.
The researcher, beaming with pride, summarizes for the spellbound audience the eight years of collaboration in QA technology. For tonight's Jeopardy!, Watson will be pitted against two all-time champions. Watson must be faster and out-think them, navigating tricky puns and complicated references. Whether that's possible, everyone wants to know.
When the telecast begins, the room takes on the atmosphere of a sporting event. Watson is displayed as a globe with swirling colorful lines; the more frequently the lines zoom around the sphere, the faster Watson is calculating. What the system may lack in appearance, it makes up with algorithmic sophistication. No longer the stuff of sci-fi movies, this is really happening.
Arora marvels at Watson's speed, often taking just two seconds to choose an answer, and the ability to calculate its own confidence level before making a response. "Watching this live in Pittsburgh was incredible," Arora says. "Knowing Carnegie Mellon is behind it makes me very proud."
One query is a crowd favorite. "It's known as both 'Steel City' and 'Iron City,'" offers host Alex Trebek. Arora laughs aloud, joining the thunderous applause. The answer: "What is Pittsburgh?" Watson misses that one.
In the end, though, Watson didn't miss many, soundly defeating Jeopardy! champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Arora, and the crowd around him, couldn't be happier.
—Kristi Ries (HS'93)
