Spoiler Alert: Jeopardy Challenge Concluded Tonight

by Mike on February 16, 2011

The three night Jeopardy challenge that pitted man versus machine has concluded this evening. If you’ve got it on your PVR and haven’t gotten around to watching it yet, be warned that there is a spoiler below.

The three day competition featured two of Jeopardy’s best players, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings who were competing against a formidable foe in Watson, an IBM designed supercomputer that is powered by 90 32-core IBM Power 750 Express servers with a total memory capacity of 16 TB.

At the end of the second night, Watson had a commanding lead over his human counterparts. Watson had earned a grand total of $35,734 while Rutter and Jennings had earned a combined total of $15,200. Today, it was time for humanity to make a comeback and Ken Jennings did that for a while as he was at $15,000 while Watson was in second spot with $11,673.

However, Watson was a tough player and by the end of the competition, Watson did pull ahead, earning a three day total of $77,147 while Jennings and Rutter had $24,000 and $21,600 respectively.

On the final question, Jennings introduced some humor in the event by writing his response to the final Jeopardy question, below which he wrote “I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.”

For winning the tournament, Watson won $1 million but you won’t see the supercomputer using his winnings for any kinds of upgrades or enhancements as IBM has confirmed that they will be giving the prize money to their charity of choice, World Vision.

Via: Mashable