Watching Watson Win

Pitt Chancellor Mark A. Nordenberg delivered opening remarks for the panel discussion titled "Natural Language Process in the World of Business, Law, and Medicine," in the University Club.

IBM’s Watson visited Oakland on March 30 and showed off its mental prowess during a mock game of Jeopardy! where it faced off against student teams from the University of Pittsburgh Honors College and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). Pitt’s team came in second, CMU’s third, and Watson won—again. In February, the computer, which has powerful analytical capabilities, trumped Jeopardy! champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Named after IBM founder Thomas J. Watson and built by IBM scientists, the computer’s public face resembles a large electronic tablet. The mock match, played in CMU’s McConomy Auditorium, was preceded earlier in the day by information technology symposiums on Pitt’s and CMU’s campuses.

Watson and Pitt’s mock Jeopardy! team (from left), Brian Sisco, a junior majoring in computer science with a minor in math; Danielle Arbogast, a junior majoring in political science and communication with a minor in legal studies; and Richard Kester, a senior majoring in history and neuroscience with a minor in chemistry.

Participants in the University Club discussion were (from left) David Ferrucci, principal investigator of the DeepQA/Watson Project for IBM; Eric Nyberg, a professor in CMU’s Language Technology Institute; Diane Litman, a Pitt computer science professor and a senior research scientist in Pitt’s Learning Research Development Center who is a leading authority on natural language processing; and discussion moderator, Bernard Meyerson, vice president for innovation and global university relations for IBM.