Ken Jennings: Watson, Jeopardy and me, the obsolete know-it-all
Trivia whiz Ken Jennings has made a career as a keeper of facts; he holds the longest winning streak in history on the U.S. game show Jeopardy. But in 2011, he played a challenge match against supercomputer Watson -- and lost. With humor and humility, Jennings tells us how it felt to have a computer literally beat him at his own game, and also makes the case for good old-fashioned human knowledge. (Filmed at TEDxSeattleU.)
TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world's leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design -- plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.
Find closed captions and translated subtitles in many languages at www.ted.com/translate
Follow TED news on Twitter: / tednews
Like TED on Facebook: / ted
Subscribe to our channel: / tedtalksdirector
I never would have guessed that this guy would be such an excellent speaker.
I know him personally, he's just as funny and creative in person as he is on the screen. A cool guy.
***** Link please?
i agree, he is really good
He’s also great in bed, he’s got it all
You win Jennings, I don't take back jokes though
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” ― Isaac Asimov
Sad, the powers that be have set us up in this direction.
Asimov was a genius who other science fiction writers called when they had a science question. Asimov said he had only met two people whose intellect surpassed his own - Carl Sagan and computer scientist, Marvin Minsky.
I actually think that's been a mainstay throughout history
It is sad. Imagine what this planet could be if humans were wise....or at least if the powerful humans were wise. One could only imagine the world it would be possible to create.
Asimov is a beast
10 years and still ever so relevant talk!
I rarely feel this way after hearing someone talk, but it's like he spoke my mind. I've always strived to achieve as much knowledge as possible in a variety of fields. One of my many childhood memories was going into a place and asking questions about things on the desks or walls. I've always been called inquisitive by my elders. I try to encourage others to read and learn more rather than relying solely on their smart phones and/or computers. It's almost like they're disconnected from learning altogether. They'll look up a fact when it's needed but quickly forget about it once it's learned. I think it will cause problems, because knowledge is more than just a collection of facts; it's the ability to quickly access, process, and engage these facts to avoid a catastrophe. This will always be valuable skill to have and it can only be had if you practice using it. If you don't, like Ken said, you might atrophy parts of the brain that can only result is less functionality.
I love Ken Jennings. When people say negative things about his personality, or that he is stuck up, etc I wish they would see something like this which shows his personality and his dry sense of humor- he is much like many of us, except smarter than me!
There are people who learn a lot so that they can feel superior. And there are people who learn a lot because they want to share what they know. Ken Jennings is the sort of person who started as the first type, and learned to become the second type through careful self-analysis. Truly someone worth emulating.
Six years later, even more relevant.
Knowledge is knowing tomato is a fruit, Wisdom is not putting a tomato in a fruit salad.
and what does it mean when you know tomato tastes excellent in a fruit salad? or that strawberries taste amazing in salsa?
@@CantEscapeFlorida it means you are a Warrior!
@@CantEscapeFlorida truly that is perspective...Wisdom itself is knowing which step to take in solving problems
@fullfist truly that is perspective...Wisdom itself is knowing which step to take in solving problems
He's not only spot on and insightful but also very engaging and fun. What a great guy!
Wow, Ken Jennings has a great sense of humor.
I keep telling everyone that!
hi ken@@llh1855
Ken Jennings, what I can says is your bright, intelligent and smart man.❤️
I found this a fascinating video, in that Ken invokes points from many facets of humanity in order to whet the listeners' appetites for not simply memorizing, but understanding and spreading trivia.
I grew up watching Jeopardy every single day. I saw your winning streak when I was 10 years old; You're my hero. I saw you go up against Watson. You're a cool dude. Thank you. Also, Arby's should put you in a commercial for that "I'd go play Jeopardy for Arby's coupons!" thing lol
i like the ambiance of his living room setting
Ken Jennings is such a fantastic human being!
Depression is when we stop learning and progressing. This guy keeps learning, no wonder he has such great energy. well done!
Thank you TED viewers...It's nice to know you Love Learning!
Glad I found this. Very informative piece and it really helps bind quite a few other videos I've seen discussing the implications of this kind of tech on the economy. Coldfusion approached it as an engineering marvel and CGP Grey's more economical approach was decidedly more negative.
Jeopardy's Greatest of all Time.
the dude is still the smartest ive seen
he is my hero, i remember watching him on tv every day of the week and crushing his opponent
That was incredible!
Great speech. I agree with Ken, and by the way, it warms my heart to hear Ken call Watson evil.
One smart 10 year old saved 100 people. What would have happened if everyone had a computer personal assistant that could put things together as well as Watson? Nearly everyone would have been warned instead of just 100 out of over 5000 in Thailand.
Why would you boot up Watson to analyze the weather pattern if you yourself don't see it.
@@palimdragonmaster3k it could have sent out an alert on your device that one was coming, so everyone who easily has their device within earshot would know it was coming before it happened. I get alerts on my phone for tornadoes, so I'm sure the same could be done today for tsunamis if it applied its power to analyzing current conditions, sending out alerts to those within the region, using GPS to track them.
@@palimdragonmaster3k Just FYI japan has an earthquake early warning system that picks up early patterns of earthquakes and tsunamis strike and sends nationwide alerts to brace for impact. It has saved many lives, and was the reason the devastating 2011 earthquake didn't have a larger toll. So yes, it makes sense to boot up Watson to see what we don't notice because patterns are right hidden within the data - and computers are unrivalled in finding patterns.
@@palimdragonmaster3k lol, tsunamis are not caused by weather (another fact that proves knowledge is power, aka the power to know not to try to analyze weather patterns for a tsunami LOL)
oh dear.. i think that was his point.. what i got from his speech is exactly that just because we think that computers are Not evil(in a poetic sense), makes us vulnerable to be over dependent on them, easing and fueling our laziness, thereby ending up being counter productive to us.. in this speech i adored his humbleness and humor!
what an amazing person
Ken has a new podcast from howstuffworks.com called Omnibus. Everyone should check it out.
I put this into action today hahaha. I watched this talk a few years back, and I brought it up in a reddit comment today. I was able to recall the story of the little girl and I found this talk again and linked it. so yeah I thought that was kinda meta hahahaha
When the future comes for you, it's a little line aiming at what you are best at.
Finally! Ken Jennings in on Jeopardy! !!!
great talk
Kids are always asking questions, but imagine how Ken was as a child? LOL, he would have asked his parents questions they couldn't answer for him! :)
His kid is probably doing the same thing to him🙂
Ken jennings is a fantastic human being
Actually there are many implications of "Moore's Law" and one of them is that the time it takes for computers to get faster actually accelerates itself, and today information technologies are actually doubling in power every 11 month which is pretty fantastic. (I would like to correct my mistake in a previous comment, a portion of matter smaller then a grain of sand has the potential computing power a quintillion times more powerful then the human brain not a quadrillion)
Good stuff! Just came across this, it's been 10 years (or so) even more apropos with IA chat happening now.
Hah my mom told me as a kid that there's no such thing as knowing too much - even trivial knowledge has its place.
Jeopardy fame Ken Jennings gives an inspiring talk about how losing human touch due to the advancement of technology, particularly the impact of Artificial Intelligence. To put it simply, he says stay hungry, stay foolish and learn everyday without heavily relying on your machines. A wonderful point. Highly recommended.
I feel like the more stuff I learn the more stuff I forget.
KEN KEEP IT G
Totally agree. I don't believe the solution is only on the crop yield when over a quarter of the food that is produced is wasted as some point in the chain.
Great video.
"Robots will steal your job, but that's okay," @Ken Jennings google it
a great talk.. and it points to an important idea.. the problem is not in growing AI but in shrinking HI (human intelligence). Never Stop Learning!
Ken Jennings makes a good point on technology...Since that 2011 tournament against Watson, computing technology has gotten almost twice as fast at about half the size on the processors... Eight years later, we are now dealing with the likes of Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant, all in a manner of speaking, rough AI systems, all with the use of their own supercomputing server mainframes...
Fun talk!
Good taok and very important issue
Knowledge is power.
17:15 This is years before he met (and beat) Jeopardy James
I thought it a well prepared lecture Pretty dynamic guy that went 39 games without losing in what is considered he holy grail of knowledge mastery that has become an iconic staple in trivia game shows. Jeopardy!
Ok I got it now. And I agree with you. In my industry the same thing is a problem, so we have written procedures for everything
You present some VERY good points, thank you! I still believe his argument for careful consideration of this rapid expansion of technology in our lives is highly valid. Unchecked growth is just never healthy, especially so in the case of technology and science because human ego is involved and grandiose persona's (like Craig Ventor), can take things too far. There is such a thing as too far - as in the case of gmo's for example, in my opinion.
Now that we have moved away from the straight physics of fitting something like Watson within the size of a human head. I agree with you completely. Sophisticated programs allowing people instant ACCESS rather than STORAGE of a vast quantity of information, certainly possible. Straight processing power and miniaturization may be reaching a limit notwithstanding a fundamental theory of physics recontextualization; as Moore's Law goes, innovation in computer science is only just getting started.
Our nonexistent memory would turn our brains into processors, and this virtually unlimited cloud of information our hard drive, like computers. By integrating machines into our lives and thinking processes we would become one ourselves.
The medium is the message
I agree
No one can beat Google at Trivia. It knows all!
+BlackMasterJoe89 Paradoxically it only knows... all that is known.
Can Watson beat "Google"?
+Scott Kosmach Watson basically parses Google
basically ?
except the dark web
underrated
real ant dec line holly and oah! what a lovely pair
When written language was becoming more accessible to the masses, many of the philosophical thinkers of the time thought humans may suffer as a race since we would no longer have to remember things. The key concept here is understanding and knowledge, as an example one doesn't need to know off hand the physical constants for every material in order to build a structurally sound building, what is key is understanding of the physical relationships and principles. I hope the same will apply here.
i just watched the jeopardy episodes. watson is scary! on the bright side the bot can really help just as what the IBM folks said, for example in medicine, etc.Watson is so smart at finding answers from written documents like journals, articles..
There is not enough room to post to have conversations like this. I am leaving out a lot of what I want to post. Personally I believe art comes from people of all persuasions. I do not think there are wholly happy people. We have all been sad, angry, joyful, afraid etc. What makes art that I like is people who have the courage to honestly express themselves about things most of us keep private or are afraid to talk about.
For some reason he sees humans being able to access more knowledge then we have ever been able to access in all of human history as a problem. I personally think that is a great thing.
well you already see it today, people have all this information but with this information comes lots of lies and conspiracy theories that can rapidly lead people to be radicalized and become irrational like the men and women who stormed the usa capitol. and like he says, having all of this information means that when we need to know something, we can just google it and then forget, decreasing the value of knowledge.
one of the coolest celebrities around
That is a good question. There have been several people that have claimed that a significant amount of these things that cost so much will be like the refrigerators or microwaves of their day. Vary expensive to start out but decreasing in price and increasing in availability to a point where it is virtually everywhere. Others have said that we need to redo our economic model.
Impressive abilities
This is a perfect analogy for the future, a computer surpassed what Ken Jennings does best. In time technology will surpass what we are best at, and replace jobs with machines.
I'm 9 years in the future and I want to remind you of the 150 yr old story of john henry
The issue with knowing things in social situations is now people do not believe you or will see you as a mean "know-it-all" UNLESS they go and look it up on their phones or laptops. I know at school I will say something I know is true and no one will believe me unless they look it up for themselves. That is the scary part of this technology, others not being able to trust you for simple facts.
If done politely for purposes of verification, that's a wonderful thing. People verifying information is exactly what we need.
I like to learn. I just use google to access that information. Then its in my head.
@58.50 chimed in with Tiberius.
"Boomer trivia..." he was ahead of the times.
Yeh but I agree with his main point that we should all keep having a thirst for knowledge..
Yet another reason to watch TEDtalks; the prevention of brain dystrophy.
I wish I had the "know it all" type memory I am way too forgetful and often not as energetic. I spend a lot of time critically thinking and trying to learn things but very little seems retained.
I worked in aviation maintenance for a long time and we were always taught to know where an answer is but not the answer, because if you remember it wrong just once you'll kill someone.
This is more a conversation about retention and less about how the information is found. Computers aren't bad, it's our ability to retain the knowledge we gain through technology. You could make the same arguments against frequent visits to the library.
AWESOME TALK! (jokes half way through)
i am the only guy that thinks that the new TED intro is a million times better than the last?????
I personally don't remember being more happy as a kid although I was plenty happy. As a kid I lacked any experience of responsibility so the fact that I was saddled with very little didn't mean to me then what it would to me now. As far as I can remember the problems I perceived then were as distressing as the ones I face today. Of course they wouldn't have the impact on me now as they did then but to my mind there is a relativity to our experience at different ages where we look at past...
Also, the "answer" may change, as manuals are "updated" and manufacturers issue "Immediate Action Item" notices.
I understand his point but it reminds me about a debate about books during ancient Greek times. They wrote down several exchanges about what books could bring to humanity, that is how we can know about them. Some were worried about keeping all of ones thoughts in a book or the ability to just look up knowledge that is not their own being a cheat sheet to life. I have a hard time listening to a statement like this and not thinking about excuses for being a Luddite.
We just need to be able to reach information directly with brain-machine interface.
good point
Kenneth Wayne Jennings III es un presentador de programas de juegos, autor y ex concursante de programas de juegos estadounidense.
explain how that applies?
He should have touched on the issue of a fact being largely pointless without a framework of understanding what that fact means and how it ties into other facts. That is why it is good to KNOW things.
I feel that technology is making our lives easier to access knowledge whenever we so choose to. Throughout my day I ask myself plenty of random questions because I am naturally curious about the world around me. If I didn't have my phone on me those thoughts would slip away and may never return. The only thing I rely on my phone except to receive calls. Personally, I rather use it as a tool to expand my knowledge whenever I so choose; but maybe that's just me.
My electronics have simply helped me continue to learn. Maybe I'd be a bit faster at mental multiplication without a calculator always handy, but I would be a very different person without access to the internet whenever I want.
It's possible that Ken Jennings could be the next host of Jeopardy. Nobody could replace Alex, though, and whoever becomes the next host is likely going to be the first one to admit that. One argument I hear against Jennings being the replacement is that he is smug. Another is that he is boring. Both arguments can be debunked using this video alone.
Obsolete? Sure, I understand this discussion about technology doing everything more efficiently than human beings and eventually replacing human labor. But Ken Jennings just WON the Jeopardy! the greatest of all time tournament against James Holzhauer and Brad Rutter! He's officially the greatest Jeopardy! player of all time! There's nothing obsolete about him.
You could not have missed the point of this video any harder if you tried. It's like you just read the title. Plus, if Watson were in the GOAT tournament he would've destroyed all of them. It killed Brad and Ken almost 10 years ago, it would be even worse today.
You've completely missed the point of the talk. Imma bet you didn't even watch it
YES SO TRUE! People don't realize how soon technology that will change everything (3d printing, biotech, nanotech, super advanced AI) People tend to think in a linear fashion when technologys power increases exponentially.
Knowledge prioritization is key. As my history instructor said, don't memorize dates, that's what the encyclopedia is for. Learn human behavior, learn to see through their eyes and understand their motivations. Then you have learned the fundamentals all all history, not a narrow list of dates.
On one hand, I agree with the values he espouses, but I don't know if I can agree with his message. If our knowledge is constantly doubling, and the very concept of being a renaissance person was last viable in the renaissance, then the fraction of knowledge we're capable of stuffing in our heads becomes a smaller and smaller slice of the pie- We either come up with a way to expand ourselves or we HAVE to export our knowledge to technology because nobody will know enough to expand it further.
Listen, it all depends how you use the search engine, the machine, the super computer. Personally, I believe technology enhances the speed, access and availability to information. It all depends on what you do with the information: discard it from your memory or retain it for fast accessing and creative usage later on.
3:32! I'm 13, and 14 tomorrow and I got it the first time!
I can't think of any information I wish I could erase but maybe I am just not being imaginative enough or I am odd. I don't think there can be any certainty as to questions like "what does it all mean?". I've never met a person who claimed to know that who could give me an explanation that convinced me they did. I suspect that it all doesn't mean anything objectively and that meaning is subjective and we decide meaning based on what we value. I agree absolute good is a strong declaration.
It should be noted that, if you need to look something up repeatedly (e.g. code syntax if you're a computer programmer), you will probably end up memorizing it to speed up your work. However, for something you only want to know once as a curiosity, Google is fine.
I think that if you want to know something, if you have interest in it, then the internet will help you learn whatever you want. For those people who don't see any value in learning, they will not learn things no matter how much you try to force them. It will be crammed for a test and then promptly discarded.
Oooh! NICE INTRO!!! SO SHORT :D
People seem to be unaware of the fact that we are slowly becoming one with our devices and with technology as a whole. It is not as is most oftenly depicted in sci-fi films where man and machine will be two separate entities, but rather, we are steadily merging with them. So it's not that we will inevitably rely totally on our technology, it's that inevitably we and technology will become one entity.
If it is not insourcing or outsourcing, what is it? Autosourcing?
Now, the fact that you watched the entire thing speaks to the idea that you are in fact a seeker of knowledge. The people that Ken Jennings is concerned about are the people that don't pursue knowledge, i.e. the high school teenager that says that math is crap and why do I need to know anything if I can just look it up. He never said that computers are evil. He just said that we aren't responsible enough to recognize their proper usage. We would rather unburden ourselves of all knowledge.
I agree with you a 100% but it looks to me that you forgot Google isn't only a search engine. Stuff like Google glass are the type of thing that would make knowing stuff obsolete. Imagine a future where we all have a Google lens on our eyeballs, perhaps it would be able to recognize people in the streets for us, remind us things that we already know about stuff we use quite often and so on. Then we would become more and more dependent on these technologies.