IBM’s super computer Watson cleaned the final round and basically won a million dollars. 100% of this prize money is supposed to go to charities but still a pretty cool achievement by the artificial intelligence overlord of the future (or maybe by end of this year).
Final Scores: Watson ended up with $77,147, Ken Jennings with $24,000 and Brad Rutter with $21,600 respectively. Ken will be receiving 300k in prize money and Brad’s total winnings were 200k. Both Ken and Brad would also be donating 50% of their winnings to their favorite charities.
It was definitely a very interesting round. Watson was wrong on one of its daily double answers (or question). Which ever way you wanna put it. It was also pretty visible that Ken knew most of the answers but was losing the battle at who presses/pulses the buzzer first. I think the buzzer part definitely gives Watson an advantage over the human contestants. Maybe there should have been a mechanical buzzer created for Watson that involved a physical action being performed using a robotic arm/hand.
Final Jeopardy question was answered correctly by all the contestants. Brad went all the way and doubled his money. However Ken only bet $1000 whereas Watson like a true gambler went in with more than 17k on the line. In the end this strategy also paid off. There you have it ladies and gentlemen. Watson kicked ass. What were you expecting?