'Jeopardy!' computer challenge a Clarkson interest

POTSDAM — Clarkson University's computer science students will watch history being made in a man-versus-machine battle of wits.

The long-running television quiz show "Jeopardy!" will have a three-day-long bout between two of its champions and a computer named Watson beginning Tuesday. Clarkson's current and prospective students will watch the match, after hearing panel discussions about computer science from professors and alumni who now work for IBM, which has been working on the project since 2007.

"It sounds like science fiction, but it's really happening," said Christopher A. Lynch, professor of computer science at Clarkson. "I think it'll be interesting to computer science students at Clarkson, just to learn about things that have been used for this. To high school students, it'll get them interested in computer science."

The college has sent out invitations to local students who have expressed an interest in attending Clarkson.

The event will be hosted by Kierre L. Daniels, a 1999 graduate, who appeared on "Jeopardy!" several years ago, finishing in second place and winning $2,000.

"I did pretty well against a couple of humans, but you throw a computer into the mix and who knows?" said Mr. Daniels, who lives in Schenectady. "The ability to reason and to think and even to ring in, this computer has to be just as smart at they are, just as fast as they are, if not better."

Designing a computer to play the famous game show was not as easy as getting one to play a game like chess; it is more complicated than simply knowing a set of rules. The computer has to be able to understand language and nuances, even puns, to get through the game's questions. Then it has to be able to extract an answer from all of its stored knowledge.

"When they started working on it, it couldn't answer many questions but they seem to have it at the level where it can play against champions," said Mr. Lynch, who chairs the math and computer science department. "It won't wipe the floor with the humans, but it'll be a good game."

Watson is going up against "Jeopardy!" champions Ken Jennings, who set a record by winning 74 games in a row and $2.5 million, and Brad Rutter, who has won $3.2 million, the most by any single player in the game's history.

Opinions about who will win this match are closely divided between Mr. Jennings, with 42 percent, and Watson, with 43 percent, in an online poll on the "Jeopardy!" website. Mr. Rutter is the favorite of 14 percent of the voters.

In a practice round held in January, Watson edged out both former champions by winning $4,400; Mr. Jennings won $3,400 and Mr. Rutter $1,200.

At Clarkson, Mr. Lynch is hoping that the event, which starts at 6 p.m. at the student center, will convince more people to think about studying computer science. The program has about 80 students in it, he said.

"People aren't as interested in computer science as they should be, but there's a lot of jobs there," Mr. Lynch said. "When the dot-com thing happened, everybody wanted to be in computer science but since then, interest has dropped off. I wanted to show people what kind of cool things computers can do."