Man Versus Machine Could Humans Stand a Chance?
When Jeopardy! announced that IBM had built a supercomputer that would face the two strongest participants on the show, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, the whole world waited in awe, to see whether these confident prodigies stood a chance to win against this super-smart machine.
If you missed this highly-discussed episode, which aired earlier this year, you can watch it now, by securing a Jeopardy download.
But before you do that, let’s hear it from the man himself, Brad Rutter, who was in the seat opposite the imposing machine, and represented the entire human race in the adrenaline-fueled episode.
Even though Brad ended up losing to the computer, he jokes, saying that they had to build a supercomputer worth $10 million to defeat him, so he thinks it’s not that bad a loss!
The biggest question on everyone’s mind, as Brad stepped up with that trademark confident and poised look, was whether he really thought that he stood a chance at this.
Surprisingly, the answer to this is yes, he did!
Brad refers back to the time, when he was paired up against Ken Jennings, who had become a household name, after he seemed impossible to defeat on the show.
Recalling the moment, when he chose to battle against Ken, he says that even then, he believed that someone had to secure this win, so why couldn’t it be him.
He proved that impossible was possible, in that episode, by outing Ken and taking over the title of America’s smartest man.
When he walked in to compete against the IBM machine, he was driven by the exact same attitude.
Moreover, the fact that he had won against ‘Watson’, which was the name of the computer, in the practice rounds, made him all the more confident.
In retrospect, he says that it is possible that the show’s producers were not using him to the best of his ability at the time, which is why both Ken and Brad won over him in those rounds.
Whatever might have been the case, the episode was a great idea, and made for one of Jeopardy’s highest rated episodes!
You should catch it now, if you missed it by any chance.
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