If The Humans Don't Beat That Jeopardy Computer I Will Never Be Able To Show My Face At The ATM...

If The Humans Don’t Beat That Jeopardy Computer I Will Never Be Able To Show My Face At The ATM Again

I’m usually a fan of the wild-waving-of-the-arms Exaggeration. The kind that makes you click here or there on a page and read something you might only have a passing interest in. I’m a ranter, and ranters tend to get loud for the sake of the rant. To bring an urgency to your computer screen, to let you know that your very way of life is in serious danger. But I don’t need to distend the results of last night’s episode of “Jeopardy!” for effect. The fate of humanity simply depends on a human being beating that doomsday machine tonight.

Watching last night’s episode was like putting my Personal Emotional Blender on a slow,
horror-film-hand-coming-out-from-behind-the-soon-to-be-victim churn. It’s bad enough that computers are better at everything that humans do already: mowing lawns, pleasuring women, spelling shit right, math, distributing porn, opening garage doors, killing people. Have you ever seen a Science Fiction movie in which having Computers be smarter than Humans ended up being a good thing? (Barbarella? And 2069, naturally.) Usually it’s two steps to Doomsville for the Human Race after we teach the machines how to do stuff better than us. I’ve never understood this impulse. I don’t have any (human) children. But if I ever do, why on Earth would I want them to be smarter than me? If they’re smart won’t they grow up to betray and abandon me? Keep ’em nice and dumb and they always come back and say “Hey, Pa. I got two quarters and three dimes, how much is that?” It’s good to be needed. But smart computers with vibrators coming out of every side of them would pretty much make Men extinct tomorrow in American society. Add a trash compactor and that’s it, women won’t need a man ever again. They’ll come to extract our sperm (through our noses) in the middle of the night and men will go feral, gathering in packs under the bridges to feed on each other and rape the leftover pieces. It’ll be like Detroit, except everywhere.

So how did Humanity do against this computer monstrosity on Night Two of “Jeopardy’s” “Humiliate Humanity Night”? Yeah, not so good. I don’t blame the humans, I told you yesterday that the computer is obviously CHEATING in all caps just like that. Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter can’t even ring in against the disembodied Hydraulic Optimus Prime Hand. The thing hits the game show G Spot *every time* *right on time*. And these guys are standing around like they’re waiting for a bus or something. Apparently you can’t ring in until Alex reads the hint completely. Ringing in beforehand locks you out. So I smell more cheating bullshit here. If the computer can’t hear Alex read the question, how does it know when he’s done?

Yesterday I wrote that IBM had come to “Jeopardy”’s studios to build their little Knowledge Bomb. But actually, they built some kind of studio in an upstate IBM lab. So that’s bullshit. Everyone is better at “Jeopardy” when they’re playing at home. There’s no pressure when you have home court advantage. I get all the questions right when no one else is around. Send whoever you want to my apartment and I could beat them at “Jeopardy” here in Brooklyn. First of all, I’m used to the smell of this place. And everyone cracks under “Jeopardy” Studios’ harsh lights of Stupidity that can turn a person into a sweaty, liquid goo. There’s even less control over the Mechanical Beast if you’re in its Little Crazy Computer Cave. So, Shenanigans all around.

I definitely demand a Rematch for down the road when we can find a magnet big enough to screw up the thing’s circuits and then sneak that onto the set. And maybe enough time to find a host who isn’t cheering for the machine to crush humanity. Alex seems in mancrush awe of the awful contraption. Perhaps by now they’re dating? He’s always been a little self-fascinated and robotic. I mean, he has all the answers and the questions handed to him at the beginning of every game, it’s not like he’s smart. He’s just Canadian. And, like all the Foreigners, we just assume he’s smarter than us. We give people Oscars simply for having British accents, we just hand them out on the street. Here you go. And one for you. Canadians are among us and can pass themselves off as Americans except that they’re very polite and then they go and try to pronounce “about” and it’s all over. Their tentacles suddenly emerge and a banana-shaped mouth comes out of their rectum. And the gig is up.

But Alex seems to WANT this terrible Watson to defeat us Humans. So what if Watson keeps ringing in first? It doesn’t have a head that can see if the little lights on its podium are on. Call on one of the other guys. They need help! No one can ring in faster than that copy machine. Alex seems shocked when the fucking computer doesn’t know the question-answer. A little too shocked if you ask me. I got an eye on you, Trebek. Don’t leave town. What kind of name is Trebek, anyway? Romulan? Yeah. Don’t leave the planet, son.

So, after watching the machine get basically all the money and leave two of the game’s greatest players looking like potted plants, we found ourselves at Final Jeopardy. What should have been a coronation for our New Digital Overlord came to a sudden, promising climax. The category was U.S. Cities. Which seems awfully easy to me, there’s only like 4 really good ones. How many of those cities have two Airports? 4. But apparently the dumb geniuses that created Watson forgot to tell it that Canada isn’t part of the United States. It knows which fucking British King was depicted in a stolen painting from Brazil in 1989, but not that there’s a giant line between America and Canada and that Toronto is WRONG, stupid. I mean, if some trailer trash idiot from the Real America had answered “Toronto” to a question about U.S. Cities in Real Real “Jeopardy!” they’d be YouTube and Late Night Show Fodder for weeks. How positively sublime. I stood and cheered. I marched around the apartment chanting “Humanity! Humanity!” There is hope that we can overcome the WHOPPER machine, and preserve our Stupidity-Fueled Society. Maybe “Geography” will be a question tonight. Apparently the computer would fail out on a Category called “Is this City in The U.S. or Canada?” It would be like “Winnipeg???????”

But it’s up to Ken and Brad. They are like Rocky now. In a Rocky 8 or 9, when Rocky is older but brought back to life to fight a giant boxer robot from Mars who is real mean and only a reincarnated White Boxer like Rocky can defeat him. It doesn’t matter if Rocky lost the first 14 rounds of the fight. This is Round 15. And I’ll be able to spin pretty much any small victory into a triumph of man over the ungodly electric-powered devil. If I ever see one of those IBM designers in a bar or something I’m just gonna say “Oh, you worked on Watson? ‘What is Toronto???????’ ‘WHAT IS TORONTO????’”

So, really, I won’t be paying attention to the money. I’m looking for a moral victory of some kind. Or an amoral victory. And immoral victory. Really, whatever you got. That Refrigerator Must Go Down and Must Go Down Hard. It’s up by a billion dollars, so whatever. It’s not about scores. It’s about style. When it get things wrong it gets them very, very wrong. Like that lady reporting after the Grammys who they thought was maybe having a stroke but was actually just possessed by the devil. “What is leg?” Yeah, exactly. “What is leg?” Hopefully the “Jeopardy!” writers have come up with some bizarre-assed categories to even the playing field. That’s really the only hope Humanity has. Either it doesn’t understand the question or maybe it gets unplugged or crashes or whatever. For however much money IBM spent to make this hideous Death Herald they probably could have cured Cancer or at least made computers that didn’t crash every five minutes.

Ken and Brad, you’re our last hope. I haven’t had a drink in 8 years almost to the day. But if we can’t beat a computer at a dumb game show, I might need a little liquid cowardice to lull me to sleep tonight. Hand me the Bushmills and just call an ambulance, you know? I’ve based my entire life on being somewhat smarter than machines. Although I still can’t figure out why the TV turns itself on at 8 AM everyday during my morning naptime. It would be nice to think that humans were still good at something. I mean, we all know how this ends. We build smart machines that build hot Cylons that fuck and kill us all. And we know they’re Cylons and we still let them fuck and kill us. That’s how hot and smart they are and how stupid and horny we are. So, we either win at “Jeopardy!” tonight or it’s basically curtains for Humans on Earth. Machines can smell fear. Through their keypads. And they’re already pretty smug and annoying. I want to slap the shit out of that annoying Garmin lady who’s always Britishly telling you where to drive like you’re some kind of idiot. Well, at least I know how to drive, lady! Where are your damned arms? Yeah, that’s what I thought. I can hear your contempt for me, Garmin lady. And I think your attitude sucks. Imagine if all machines get suddenly haughty, how crappy that would be? That’s why I’ll take anything from the humans tomorrow night. Urinate on the computer! Spill some coffee on it! Anything! Do it for ME!