Final Jeopardy by Stephen Baker

On February 14th, 15th and 16th, man will be pitted against machine in a special three-part edition of Jeopardy!. The venerable quiz show’s all-time greats, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, will match wits with IBM’s super-computer, Watson, in a battle royale of knowledge.

Stephen Baker’s Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $24) tells the story of Watson’s development, from the initial grand idea to its unveiling as the top-ranked challenger to previous big-time Jeopardy! winners.

In an age where computing technology has permeated almost every part of life, and our reliance on it is greater than ever, the concepts of knowledge and intelligence are due for an examination. To take an obvious example, it is no longer necessary to remember a friend’s telephone number as cellphones store the information for us. Similarly, GPS gives us driving directions on demand, online banking ensures we pay our bills on time, and the internet as a whole is a trove of information that yields answers to almost any question with a simple Google search. Needless to say, what we know and the information we need to retain have both changed substantially over the years.

The beauty of Baker’s book is that it is more than just an account of the IBM team’s efforts to build a machine that mimics human intelligence (which is, to be sure, warmly and humorously described), it is also a fascinating look at the nature of knowledge, understanding, and recollection.

As Baker explains, when presented with a question human mental processes run in parallel so we can parse the different components of the question at the same time, getting us (at least) close to an answer much faster. We also have the immeasurable advantage of understanding context and, in a setting such as Jeopardy!, benefiting from anticipation: a human contestant has an advantage since she knows the category the question falls under so is already summoning and sorting through all her knowledge of that subject. A computer, on the other hand, doesn’t actually “know” anything. It has a defined set of data and reacts only to input, so each question is, in effect, answered in a vacuum.

Baker skillfully weaves the two threads of the story together, and the book contains many passages that make the reader not only assess what they think but how they think, and how they have absorbed and stored the knowledge they possess. It’s books like this that remind us there is still so much we don’t understand about our own brains, and that the journey of discovery has only just begun.

Will Watson be triumphant? This might be the only occasion on which I’ll suggest turning on the television instead of picking up a book, but I have no choice…you’ll have to watch the show to find out.

Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything will be on bookshelves on February 17th. Pre-order now at HMHBooks.com.