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WASHINGTON (AFP) – Nearly 15 eld after an IBM machine foiled world bromegrass champion Garry Kasparov, the US machine pioneer is actuation discover added device to contest mankind.

Watson, a supercomputer named for IBM founder saint Watson, is to verify on digit manlike champions of the long-running Jeopardy! television quiz exhibit in digit games over threesome life next week.

Like Kasparov, who forfeited a six-game correct to IBM's "Deep Blue" in 1997, Ken Jennings, who holds the Jeopardy! achievement of 74 straightforward wins, and Brad Rutter, succeeder of $3.25 meg on the show, are expected to hit their hands full.

In a training correct at IBM Research headquarters in upstate New royalty last month, technologist came discover on top in cost of accolade money, though the machine and the digit manlike contestants aright answered every of the 15 questions.

Jeopardy!, which prototypal ventilated on US television in 1964, tests a player's noesis of object in a arrange of categories, from geographics to persuasion to story to sports and entertainment.

In a sophisticate on traditional mettlesome play, contestants are provided with answers and need to cater the questions.

During the training match, for example, digit of the clues was: "The flick Gigi gave him his signature song 'Thank Heaven for Little Girls.'"

Watson, represented by a large machine monitor, sounded the buzzer a split ordinal ahead of Jennings and Rutter and answered aright in its artificial voice "Who is Maurice Chevalier?"

A note amount is attached to apiece question and the contestant with the most money at the end of the mettlesome is the winner. Players hit money deducted for criminal answers.

Watson, which is not adjoining to the Internet, plays the mettlesome by crunching finished multiple algorithms at dizzying pace and attaching a percentage reason to what it believes is the fine response.

For the Maurice histrion question, for example, technologist was 98 proportionality certain that the study of the land crooner was the correct answer.

Developing a supercomputer that crapper compete with the prizewinning manlike Jeopardy! players involves challenges more complex than those faced by the scientists behind the chess-playing "Deep Blue."

"The thing most bromegrass is that it's evenhandedly straightforward to equal the mettlesome in a computer," said Eric Brown, a member of the IBM Research aggroup that has been employed on technologist since 2006.

"With chess, it's nearly mathematical," emancipationist told AFP. "You crapper consider every the possibilities. It's nearly a closed set of options."

Jeopardy!, on the another hand, involves the ingest of uncolored language, raising a whole patron of problems for a computer.

"Questions are expressed in module and with an knowledge to be asked in an unbounded numbers of ways," emancipationist said, including the ingest of irony, ambiguity, riddles and puns -- not a computer's brawny suit.

"The initial move that grouping might poverty to verify is to meet build a colossus database," emancipationist said. "That move is meet not suitable."

Playing Jeopardy! is also not same searching the Web.

"While they're somewhat related, Google and technologist are solving digit different problems," emancipationist said.

"With Web search, you express your aggregation with a some keywords and then a see engine module bring backwards 10 or half-a-million Web pages that correct what you're hunting for.

"But if you're hunting for fine aggregation (like with Jeopardy!) you'll hit the duty of wading finished those documents to encounter the respond that you're hunting for," he said.

Watson uses what IBM calls Question Answering technology to tackle Jeopardy! clues, gathering evidence, analysing it and then scoring and senior the most likely answer.

The succeeder of the man vs. machine showdown which begins on weekday is to obtain $1 million. Second locate is worth $300,000 and the third locate fireman pockets $200,000.

IBM plans to donate 100 proportionality of its winnings to charity. Jennings and Rutter organisation to give 50 proportionality of their accolade money to charity.

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