WHAT: The Jeopardy! IBM challenge pits the long-running game show’s two most successful contestants against an IBM computer named Watson, as a demonstration of its ability to understand and respond to natural language questions.  Figuring out the contextual cues and ambiguity found in normal human speech, especially the tricky wordplay found in Jeopardy! clues, is a major challenge for computers.  Advancements in that field have major implications for science, business and personal computing.

Beyond watching the match, computer scientists from IBM and Penn will talk about Watson’s significance and answer questions from the audience.

WHO:              Attendees:           

Leo Kluger, Worldwide Program Director, Global Financing at IBM.  Kluger, in addition to being a Penn alumnus, is an analytics expert specializing in information systems.

Lyle Ungar, Associate Professor of Computer and Information Science, University of Pennsylvania.  Ungar’s work is focused on scalable machine learning and text mining methods.

Mitch Marcus, RCA Professor of Artificial Intelligence, University of Pennsylvania.  Marcus specializes in statistical natural language processing and human-robot communication.

Siddharth Chandrasekhar, former Penn student and Jeopardy! college tournament semifinalist

WHEN:            6:30-8 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 16

WHERE:            Wu and Chen Auditorium, Levine Hall, 3330 Walnut St.

Reservations are required so that admittance to Levine Hall can be arranged.