That Jeopardy Computer Is Totally Cheating At "Jeopardy"

First off, hats off to the Humans fighting on the side of Humanity in this week’s “Jeopardy’s IBM Man v. Machine Throwdown.” Go Humanity! When ATMs and toasters can come up with the questions for answers on pop culture subjects better than people like you and me, who will work at Entertainment Weekly magazine in the future? Computers with spinning globe icons for heads. Then Human Beings will be in real “Jeopardy.” What kind of media jobs will we have then? Making sure the machines are plugged in? Doesn’t sound so fulfilling. So either Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter has to defeat this fucking closet full of air-conditioned servers or we’ll be working for Hal 9000 for the rest of our damned lives. And that fucking vending machine knows when you’re .0009 seconds late for work.

Obviously the computer is CHEATING. While Ken and Brad have to actually read and hear the question, the big Speak n’ Spell is already on Wikipedia and checking its Gmail and has the fucking answer. You’re telling me they let IBM come on the set of “Jeopardy” and have a whole room full of load-spinning computer bullshit and not in any one corner of that monster computer is there the technology to get online? Come on. I’m stupid, but I’m not THAT stupid. IBM cheated during the Kasparov v. Deep Blue chess matches, too. They covered up their complicity in the Holocaust, for Christsakes. You don’t think they can grease a few games of “Jeopardy”? Alex and the writers of Jeopardy aren’t really smart, they’re TV smart. For all we know those black boxes are just filled with howler monkeys and in one cabinet there’s a dude looking up the answer on his laptop.

So the Watson computer gets the hints pumped into its servers digitally. Why not plug in Ken and Brad, like in The Matrix? Just jam a USB right into the backs of their skulls, too? The machine is ringing in quicker because it doesn’t have to take any time to understand the answer-question. How the hell does a person write about “Jeopardy”? The answers are the questions and the questions are the answers. Whatever. So the thing gets the questions quicker, doesn’t have to listen to Alex woodenly read, is already working on the answer and has some sort of killer Terminator arm that is a billion times better than the human hand-eye-thumb-brain connection. And yet the Humans are doing pretty well! Go Humanity!

The computer sometimes doesn’t understand the category. So let’s hope “Jeopardy” has subjects like Pig Latin, Sex, Feelings Machines Don’t Understand and Episodes of “Seinfeld.” I like that they show you what the computer doesn’t know at the bottom of the screen. Stupid computer! You don’t understand what decades are! Time has no meaning to you! Your clock is probably flashing 12:00 like some kind of fucking VCR from 1985! Humanity rules!

You can tell the computer is cheating from the video above. Its first choice on the board happens to be the goddamned Daily Double? Now maybe the dopey “Jeopardy” producers put the Daily Double in the first row at $800 like 51% of the time or something. Has a Daily Double ever been at the top of a row? No. And let’s hope they have some of those Visual Daily Doubles, there’s no way a computer can understand a person talking. Have you ever tried to look something up on your phone with the audio Google technology? Especially porn? Forget it. I keep getting crabcakes. So how the hell did it know where the Daily Double was? Does it have the ability to slip money into a Swiss Bank Account for Alex Trebek? That only he and the evil machine know about? Because the answer “What is Maxwell’s Silver Hammer” and “Who is Maxwell” is not even in the same ballpark. The microwave didn’t understand the question-answer and if some human had said something so non sequiturious Alex would have laughed at them and then eaten their liver. C’mon, Alex! Aren’t you on the side of Humanity? Are you some kind of fucking cyborg? Throw humans a bone, man!

I’m still pissed at Gary Kasparov for getting frustrated and quiting against Deep Blue. I understand his complaints. First, if Deep Blue is such a great computer, why did they need to have every other Chess Grand Master in the World who hated Kasparov on IBM payroll, consulting on the games? Computers don’t need consultants. They need human blood, to keep the gears lubricated. Deep Blue knew every game Kasparov had ever played. So his normal bullshit wasn’t going to win. Play the dumb computer to like 400 draws in a row, find the fucking flaw in the system and beat the shit out of it forever after. Computers don’t get frustrated, why should you? Ego? Computers have no ego. Look at Commander Data. They kept him sitting at that front seat driving the Enterprise van for like 25 years. I’m a computer that knows everything. “Yes, bring the car around Jeeves. Set a course for the Neutral Zone. Do you have any Grey Poupon?” So you ain’t gonna make Deep Blue sweat or cry or flip the chessboard. You’re a chess champion, you play people to draws while you get blowjobs from groupies.

So far, only Brad has been visibly flustered by his inability to ring in. And he’s tied with the cheating computer! And the Humans do have a few advantages on the machine: they can hear the other players give incorrect answers. Watson will just answer whatever wrong answer one of them already gave, it has no fucking ears. It’s probably listening to the new Radiohead the whole time. Who knows what computers do other than try to Kill Us! By not opening the cargo bay doors. Just stay cool, Humans. I mean, I know you have already taped these shows, but if you’re reading this and can travel back to the past when the games are being taped, just be cool. No doubt the “Jeopardy” writers want this box of crap to start smoking and malfunctioning during the show. So
they’ve probably got some curveballs hidden on the big blue board. There will be at least one category it doesn’t understand. And maybe Final Jeopardy will be “Fun Hats to Wear at Parties.” Computers don’t get invited to parties. Therefore We Win! If we lose this battle against the rise of the machine the Unabomber will have been so right. We’ll all have to move to the countryside and live in papier-mâché wasp nests. So Win, you Humans!

At least they still haven’t built a machine that can win “The Price is Right.” You just can’t handle those little plinko chips. Stupid computers!