TEDxSeattleU
Ken Jennings: Watson, Jeopardy and me, the obsolete know-it-all
Filmed:
Readability: 3.6
1,338,700 views
Trivia whiz Ken Jennings has made a career as a keeper of facts; he holds the longest winning streak in history on the US quiz show Jeopardy. But in 2011, he played a challenge match against IBM's 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 makes the case for good old-fashioned human knowledge.
Ken Jennings - Know-it-all
Ken Jennings holds the record for most consecutive wins on the classic American trivia game show, Jeopardy. Full bio
Ken Jennings holds the record for most consecutive wins on the classic American trivia game show, Jeopardy. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
00:12
In two weeks time, that's the ninth anniversary
0
495
2775
00:15
of the day I first stepped out onto that hallowed "Jeopardy" set.
1
3270
4100
00:19
I mean, nine years is a long time.
2
7370
1850
00:21
And given "Jeopardy's" average demographics,
3
9220
1918
00:23
I think what that means
4
11138
1292
00:24
is most of the people who saw me on that show are now dead.
5
12430
3191
00:27
(Laughter)
6
15621
2183
00:29
But not all, a few are still alive.
7
17804
1439
00:31
Occasionally I still get recognized at the mall or whatever.
8
19243
2513
00:33
And when I do, it's as a bit of a know-it-all.
9
21756
2702
00:36
I think that ship has sailed, it's too late for me.
10
24458
2454
00:38
For better or for worse, that's what I'm going to be known as,
11
26912
2191
00:41
as the guy who knew a lot of weird stuff.
12
29103
3234
00:44
And I can't complain about this.
13
32337
2288
00:46
I feel like that was always sort of my destiny,
14
34625
2413
00:49
although I had for many years been pretty deeply in the trivia closet.
15
37038
3467
00:52
If nothing else, you realize very quickly as a teenager,
16
40505
2766
00:55
it is not a hit with girls to know Captain Kirk's middle name.
17
43271
3188
00:58
(Laughter)
18
46459
1165
00:59
And as a result, I was sort of the deeply closeted kind of know-it-all for many years.
19
47624
4231
01:03
But if you go further back, if you look at it, it's all there.
20
51855
3224
01:07
I was the kind of kid who was always bugging Mom and Dad
21
55079
3129
01:10
with whatever great fact I had just read about --
22
58208
2932
01:13
Haley's comet or giant squids
23
61140
1701
01:14
or the size of the world's biggest pumpkin pie or whatever it was.
24
62841
3929
01:18
I now have a 10-year-old of my own who's exactly the same.
25
66770
3217
01:21
And I know how deeply annoying it is, so karma does work.
26
69987
4101
01:26
(Laughter)
27
74088
1500
01:27
And I loved game shows, fascinated with game shows.
28
75588
2833
01:30
I remember crying on my first day of kindergarten back in 1979
29
78421
3406
01:33
because it had just hit me, as badly as I wanted to go to school,
30
81827
2525
01:36
that I was also going to miss "Hollywood Squares" and "Family Feud."
31
84352
3333
01:39
I was going to miss my game shows.
32
87685
4227
01:43
And later, in the mid-'80s,
33
91912
1690
01:45
when "Jeopardy" came back on the air,
34
93602
1611
01:47
I remember running home from school every day to watch the show.
35
95213
4073
01:51
It was my favorite show, even before it paid for my house.
36
99286
5502
01:56
And we lived overseas, we lived in South Korea where my dad was working,
37
104788
2414
01:59
where there was only one English language TV channel.
38
107202
2417
02:01
There was Armed Forces TV,
39
109619
1250
02:02
and if you didn't speak Korean, that's what you were watching.
40
110869
2166
02:05
So me and all my friends would run home every day and watch "Jeopardy."
41
113035
3316
02:08
I was always that kind of obsessed trivia kid.
42
116351
3001
02:11
I remember being able to play Trivial Pursuit against my parents back in the '80s
43
119352
5183
02:16
and holding my own, back when that was a fad.
44
124535
2834
02:19
There's a weird sense of mastery you get
45
127369
2048
02:21
when you know some bit of boomer trivia that Mom and Dad don't know.
46
129417
3245
02:24
You know some Beatles factoid that Dad didn't know.
47
132662
3556
02:28
And you think, ah hah, knowledge really is power --
48
136218
2984
02:31
the right fact deployed at exactly the right place.
49
139202
7184
02:38
I never had a guidance counselor
50
146386
1816
02:40
who thought this was a legitimate career path,
51
148202
2384
02:42
that thought you could major in trivia
52
150586
2449
02:45
or be a professional ex-game show contestant.
53
153035
3417
02:48
And so I sold out way too young.
54
156452
2400
02:50
I didn't try to figure out what one does with that.
55
158852
1434
02:52
I studied computers because I heard that was the thing,
56
160286
2465
02:54
and I became a computer programmer --
57
162751
1861
02:56
not an especially good one,
58
164612
1799
02:58
not an especially happy one at the time when I was first on "Jeopardy" in 2004.
59
166411
5009
03:03
But that's what I was doing.
60
171420
1325
03:04
And it made it doubly ironic -- my computer background --
61
172745
2840
03:07
a few years later, I think 2009 or so,
62
175585
4216
03:11
when I got another phone call from "Jeopardy" saying,
63
179801
2538
03:14
"It's early days yet, but IBM tells us
64
182339
2323
03:16
they want to build a supercomputer to beat you at 'Jeopardy.'
65
184662
5084
03:21
Are you up for this?"
66
189746
1498
03:23
This was the first I'd heard of it.
67
191244
1590
03:24
And of course I said yes, for several reasons.
68
192834
2668
03:27
One, because playing "Jeopardy" is a great time.
69
195502
2252
03:29
It's fun. It's the most fun you can have with your pants on.
70
197754
3641
03:33
(Laughter)
71
201426
2004
03:35
And I would do it for nothing.
72
203430
1405
03:36
I don't think they know that, luckily,
73
204835
1733
03:38
but I would go back and play for Arby's coupons.
74
206568
3218
03:41
I just love "Jeopardy," and I always have.
75
209786
2132
03:43
And second of all, because I'm a nerdy guy and this seemed like the future.
76
211918
4234
03:48
People playing computers on game shows
77
216152
1866
03:50
was the kind of thing I always imagined would happen in the future,
78
218018
3052
03:53
and now I could be on the stage with it.
79
221070
1548
03:54
I was not going to say no.
80
222618
1084
03:55
The third reason I said yes
81
223702
1133
03:56
is because I was pretty confident that I was going to win.
82
224835
2600
03:59
I had taken some artificial intelligence classes.
83
227435
2136
04:01
I knew there were no computers that could do what you need to do to win on "Jeopardy."
84
229571
4330
04:05
People don't realize how tough it is to write that kind of program
85
233901
3200
04:09
that can read a "Jeopardy" clue in a natural language like English
86
237101
3560
04:12
and understand all the double meanings, the puns, the red herrings,
87
240661
3625
04:16
unpack the meaning of the clue.
88
244286
2567
04:18
The kind of thing that a three- or four-year-old human, little kid could do,
89
246853
4641
04:23
very hard for a computer.
90
251494
2225
04:25
And I thought, well this is going to be child's play.
91
253719
3109
04:28
Yes, I will come destroy the computer and defend my species.
92
256828
4924
04:33
(Laughter)
93
261752
1851
04:35
But as the years went on,
94
263603
1600
04:37
as IBM started throwing money and manpower and processor speed at this,
95
265203
3791
04:40
I started to get occasional updates from them,
96
268994
2091
04:43
and I started to get a little more worried.
97
271085
1785
04:44
I remember a journal article about this new question answering software that had a graph.
98
272870
6083
04:50
It was a scatter chart showing performance on "Jeopardy,"
99
278953
3917
04:54
tens of thousands of dots representing "Jeopardy" champions up at the top
100
282870
3651
04:58
with their performance plotted on number of --
101
286521
2282
05:00
I was going to say questions answered, but answers questioned, I guess,
102
288803
4066
05:04
clues responded to --
103
292869
1959
05:06
versus the accuracy of those answers.
104
294828
2391
05:09
So there's a certain performance level that the computer would need to get to.
105
297219
3359
05:12
And at first, it was very low.
106
300578
1791
05:14
There was no software that could compete at this kind of arena.
107
302369
3367
05:17
But then you see the line start to go up.
108
305736
2184
05:19
And it's getting very close to what they call the winner's cloud.
109
307920
2483
05:22
And I noticed in the upper right of the scatter chart
110
310403
1674
05:24
some darker dots, some black dots, that were a different color.
111
312077
6125
05:30
And thought, what are these?
112
318202
1568
05:31
"The black dots in the upper right represent 74-time 'Jeopardy' champion Ken Jennings."
113
319770
3892
05:35
And I saw this line coming for me.
114
323662
2192
05:37
And I realized, this is it.
115
325854
1100
05:38
This is what it looks like when the future comes for you.
116
326954
2040
05:40
(Laughter)
117
328994
1943
05:42
It's not the Terminator's gun sight;
118
330937
2182
05:45
it's a little line coming closer and closer to the thing you can do,
119
333119
4167
05:49
the only thing that makes you special, the thing you're best at.
120
337286
3135
05:52
And when the game eventually happened about a year later,
121
340421
4752
05:57
it was very different than the "Jeopardy" games I'd been used to.
122
345173
2863
06:00
We were not playing in L.A. on the regular "Jeopardy" set.
123
348036
2501
06:02
Watson does not travel.
124
350537
2266
06:04
Watson's actually huge.
125
352803
1100
06:05
It's thousands of processors, a terabyte of memory,
126
353903
4533
06:10
trillions of bytes of memory.
127
358436
1418
06:11
We got to walk through his climate-controlled server room.
128
359854
2433
06:14
The only other "Jeopardy" contestant to this day I've ever been inside.
129
362287
3625
06:17
And so Watson does not travel.
130
365912
3324
06:21
You must come to it; you must make the pilgrimage.
131
369236
4034
06:25
So me and the other human player
132
373270
2057
06:27
wound up at this secret IBM research lab
133
375327
3208
06:30
in the middle of these snowy woods in Westchester County
134
378535
2548
06:33
to play the computer.
135
381083
1582
06:34
And we realized right away
136
382665
2050
06:36
that the computer had a big home court advantage.
137
384715
2899
06:39
There was a big Watson logo in the middle of the stage.
138
387614
2351
06:41
Like you're going to play the Chicago Bulls,
139
389965
2667
06:44
and there's the thing in the middle of their court.
140
392632
2300
06:46
And the crowd was full of IBM V.P.s and programmers
141
394932
3236
06:50
cheering on their little darling,
142
398168
1897
06:52
having poured millions of dollars into this
143
400065
2366
06:54
hoping against hope that the humans screw up,
144
402431
2938
06:57
and holding up "Go Watson" signs
145
405369
1797
06:59
and just applauding like pageant moms every time their little darling got one right.
146
407166
4648
07:03
I think guys had "W-A-T-S-O-N" written on their bellies in grease paint.
147
411814
5867
07:09
If you can imagine computer programmers with the letters "W-A-T-S-O-N" written on their gut,
148
417681
5404
07:15
it's an unpleasant sight.
149
423085
1667
07:16
But they were right. They were exactly right.
150
424752
3047
07:19
I don't want to spoil it, if you still have this sitting on your DVR,
151
427799
2416
07:22
but Watson won handily.
152
430215
3167
07:25
And I remember standing there behind the podium
153
433382
2867
07:28
as I could hear that little insectoid thumb clicking.
154
436249
2765
07:31
It had a robot thumb that was clicking on the buzzer.
155
439014
3369
07:34
And you could hear that little tick, tick, tick, tick.
156
442383
4115
07:38
And I remember thinking, this is it.
157
446498
2753
07:41
I felt obsolete.
158
449251
1597
07:42
I felt like a Detroit factory worker of the '80s
159
450848
3051
07:45
seeing a robot that could now do his job on the assembly line.
160
453899
2851
07:48
I felt like quiz show contestant was now the first job that had become obsolete
161
456750
5091
07:53
under this new regime of thinking computers.
162
461841
3779
07:57
And it hasn't been the last.
163
465620
1957
07:59
If you watch the news, you'll see occasionally --
164
467577
2642
08:02
and I see this all the time --
165
470219
1692
08:03
that pharmacists now, there's a machine that can fill prescriptions automatically
166
471911
4758
08:08
without actually needing a human pharmacist.
167
476669
2409
08:11
And a lot of law firms are getting rid of paralegals
168
479078
2191
08:13
because there's software that can sum up case laws and legal briefs and decisions.
169
481269
4392
08:17
You don't need human assistants for that anymore.
170
485661
2508
08:20
I read the other day about a program where you feed it a box score
171
488169
3133
08:23
from a baseball or football game
172
491302
1784
08:25
and it spits out a news article as if a human had watched the game
173
493086
2576
08:27
and was commenting on it.
174
495662
1425
08:29
And obviously these new technologies can't do as clever or creative a job
175
497087
3999
08:33
as the humans they're replacing,
176
501086
1435
08:34
but they're faster, and crucially, they're much, much cheaper.
177
502521
3817
08:38
So it makes me wonder what the economic effects of this might be.
178
506338
5017
08:43
I've read economists saying that, as a result of these new technologies,
179
511355
3346
08:46
we'll enter a new golden age of leisure
180
514701
2125
08:48
when we'll all have time for the things we really love
181
516826
2293
08:51
because all these onerous tasks will be taken over by Watson and his digital brethren.
182
519119
6972
08:58
I've heard other people say quite the opposite,
183
526091
1714
08:59
that this is yet another tier of the middle class
184
527805
2216
09:02
that's having the thing they can do taken away from them by a new technology
185
530021
5034
09:07
and that this is actually something ominous,
186
535055
1564
09:08
something that we should worry about.
187
536619
1505
09:10
I'm not an economist myself.
188
538124
1849
09:11
All I know is how it felt to be the guy put out of work.
189
539973
3272
09:15
And it was friggin' demoralizing. It was terrible.
190
543245
3060
09:18
Here's the one thing that I was ever good at,
191
546305
2231
09:20
and all it took was IBM pouring tens of millions of dollars and its smartest people
192
548536
4153
09:24
and thousands of processors working in parallel
193
552689
2533
09:27
and they could do the same thing.
194
555222
2084
09:29
They could do it a little bit faster and a little better on national TV,
195
557306
3231
09:32
and "I'm sorry, Ken. We don't need you anymore."
196
560537
2735
09:35
And it made me think, what does this mean,
197
563272
3733
09:39
if we're going to be able to start outsourcing,
198
567005
1739
09:40
not just lower unimportant brain functions.
199
568744
3625
09:44
I'm sure many of you remember a distant time
200
572369
2475
09:46
when we had to know phone numbers, when we knew our friends' phone numbers.
201
574844
2827
09:49
And suddenly there was a machine that did that,
202
577671
1991
09:51
and now we don't need to remember that anymore.
203
579662
2393
09:54
I have read that there's now actually evidence
204
582055
1883
09:55
that the hippocampus, the part of our brain that handles spacial relationships,
205
583938
4444
10:00
physically shrinks and atrophies
206
588382
1654
10:02
in people who use tools like GPS,
207
590036
2602
10:04
because we're not exercising our sense of direction anymore.
208
592638
2564
10:07
We're just obeying a little talking voice on our dashboard.
209
595202
2334
10:09
And as a result, a part of our brain that's supposed to do that kind of stuff
210
597536
2604
10:12
gets smaller and dumber.
211
600140
1813
10:13
And it made me think, what happens when computers are now better
212
601953
3791
10:17
at knowing and remembering stuff than we are?
213
605744
3500
10:21
Is all of our brain going to start to shrink and atrophy like that?
214
609244
4076
10:25
Are we as a culture going to start to value knowledge less?
215
613320
3767
10:29
As somebody who has always believed in the importance of the stuff that we know,
216
617087
3872
10:32
this was a terrifying idea to me.
217
620959
7224
10:40
The more I thought about it, I realized, no, it's still important.
218
628183
4977
10:45
The things we know are still important.
219
633160
2209
10:47
I came to believe there were two advantages
220
635369
3002
10:50
that those of us who have these things in our head have
221
638371
3671
10:54
over somebody who says, "Oh, yeah. I can Google that. Hold on a second."
222
642042
4826
10:58
There's an advantage of volume, and there's an advantage of time.
223
646868
2668
11:01
The advantage of volume, first,
224
649536
1556
11:03
just has to do with the complexity of the world nowadays.
225
651092
2632
11:05
There's so much information out there.
226
653724
1417
11:07
Being a Renaissance man or woman,
227
655141
1284
11:08
that's something that was only possible in the Renaissance.
228
656425
2166
11:10
Now it's really not possible
229
658591
1266
11:11
to be reasonably educated on every field of human endeavor.
230
659857
3084
11:14
There's just too much.
231
662941
1604
11:16
They say that the scope of human information
232
664545
2497
11:19
is now doubling every 18 months or so,
233
667042
2049
11:21
the sum total of human information.
234
669091
2536
11:23
That means between now and late 2014,
235
671627
3582
11:27
we will generate as much information, in terms of gigabytes,
236
675209
3467
11:30
as all of humanity has in all the previous millenia put together.
237
678676
4080
11:34
It's doubling every 18 months now.
238
682756
2071
11:36
This is terrifying because a lot of the big decisions we make
239
684827
3359
11:40
require the mastery of lots of different kinds of facts.
240
688186
3276
11:43
A decision like where do I go to school? What should I major in?
241
691462
5032
11:48
Who do I vote for?
242
696494
1434
11:49
Do I take this job or that one?
243
697928
1766
11:51
These are the decisions that require correct judgments
244
699694
3634
11:55
about many different kinds of facts.
245
703328
2120
11:57
If we have those facts at our mental fingertips,
246
705448
1737
11:59
we're going to be able to make informed decisions.
247
707185
2700
12:01
If, on the other hand, we need to look them all up,
248
709885
2667
12:04
we may be in trouble.
249
712552
1860
12:06
According to a National Geographic survey I just saw,
250
714412
1938
12:08
somewhere along the lines of 80 percent
251
716350
2320
12:10
of the people who vote in a U.S. presidential election about issues like foreign policy
252
718670
4015
12:14
cannot find Iraq or Afghanistan on a map.
253
722685
2967
12:17
If you can't do that first step,
254
725652
2566
12:20
are you really going to look up the other thousand facts you're going to need to know
255
728218
3035
12:23
to master your knowledge of U.S. foreign policy?
256
731253
2966
12:26
Quite probably not.
257
734219
1265
12:27
At some point you're just going to be like,
258
735484
1317
12:28
"You know what? There's too much to know. Screw it."
259
736801
1867
12:30
And you'll make a less informed decision.
260
738668
1800
12:32
The other issue is the advantage of time that you have
261
740468
3484
12:35
if you have all these things at your fingertips.
262
743952
1934
12:37
I always think of the story of a little girl named Tilly Smith.
263
745886
3416
12:41
She was a 10-year-old girl from Surrey, England
264
749302
2683
12:43
on vacation with her parents a few years ago in Phuket, Thailand.
265
751985
3333
12:47
She runs up to them on the beach one morning
266
755318
1650
12:48
and says, "Mom, Dad, we've got to get off the beach."
267
756968
2585
12:51
And they say, "What do you mean? We just got here."
268
759553
2547
12:54
And she said, "In Mr. Kearney's geography class last month,
269
762100
3100
12:57
he told us that when the tide goes out abruptly out to sea
270
765200
2935
13:00
and you see the waves churning way out there,
271
768135
1692
13:01
that's the sign of a tsunami, and you need to clear the beach."
272
769827
4198
13:06
What would you do if your 10-year-old daughter came up to you with this?
273
774025
2195
13:08
Her parents thought about it,
274
776220
1344
13:09
and they finally, to their credit, decided to believe her.
275
777564
2134
13:11
They told the lifeguard, they went back to the hotel,
276
779698
2015
13:13
and the lifeguard cleared over 100 people off the beach, luckily,
277
781713
3884
13:17
because that was the day of the Boxing Day tsunami,
278
785597
2905
13:20
the day after Christmas, 2004,
279
788502
1595
13:22
that killed thousands of people in Southeast Asia and around the Indian Ocean.
280
790097
3966
13:26
But not on that beach, not on Mai Khao Beach,
281
794063
2474
13:28
because this little girl had remembered one fact from her geography teacher a month before.
282
796537
5214
13:33
Now when facts come in handy like that --
283
801751
2097
13:35
I love that story because it shows you the power of one fact,
284
803848
3615
13:39
one remembered fact in exactly the right place at the right time --
285
807463
4272
13:43
normally something that's easier to see on game shows than in real life.
286
811735
2745
13:46
But in this case it happened in real life.
287
814480
2103
13:48
And it happens in real life all the time.
288
816583
1619
13:50
It's not always a tsunami, often it's a social situation.
289
818202
2214
13:52
It's a meeting or job interview or first date
290
820416
4713
13:57
or some relationship that gets lubricated
291
825129
1674
13:58
because two people realize they share some common piece of knowledge.
292
826803
3380
14:02
You say where you're from, and I say, "Oh, yeah."
293
830183
2551
14:04
Or your alma mater or your job,
294
832734
1633
14:06
and I know just a little something about it,
295
834367
1917
14:08
enough to get the ball rolling.
296
836284
1549
14:09
People love that shared connection that gets created
297
837833
1869
14:11
when somebody knows something about you.
298
839702
2292
14:13
It's like they took the time to get to know you before you even met.
299
841994
4010
14:18
That's often the advantage of time.
300
846004
1412
14:19
And it's not effective if you say, "Well, hold on.
301
847416
1485
14:20
You're from Fargo, North Dakota. Let me see what comes up.
302
848901
5564
14:26
Oh, yeah. Roger Maris was from Fargo."
303
854465
1902
14:28
That doesn't work. That's just annoying.
304
856367
3033
14:31
(Laughter)
305
859400
2447
14:33
The great 18th-century British theologian and thinker, friend of Dr. Johnson,
306
861847
5702
14:39
Samuel Parr once said, "It's always better to know a thing than not to know it."
307
867549
6368
14:45
And if I have lived my life by any kind of creed, it's probably that.
308
873917
4533
14:50
I have always believed that the things we know -- that knowledge is an absolute good,
309
878450
5533
14:55
that the things we have learned and carry with us in our heads
310
883983
2800
14:58
are what make us who we are,
311
886783
2018
15:00
as individuals and as a species.
312
888801
2517
15:03
I don't know if I want to live in a world where knowledge is obsolete.
313
891318
4097
15:07
I don't want to live in a world where cultural literacy has been replaced
314
895415
3336
15:10
by these little bubbles of specialty,
315
898751
1910
15:12
so that none of us know about the common associations
316
900661
3506
15:16
that used to bind our civilization together.
317
904167
2516
15:18
I don't want to be the last trivia know-it-all
318
906683
1934
15:20
sitting on a mountain somewhere,
319
908617
1418
15:22
reciting to himself the state capitals and the names of "Simpsons" episodes
320
910035
4365
15:26
and the lyrics of Abba songs.
321
914400
3666
15:30
I feel like our civilization works when this is a vast cultural heritage that we all share
322
918066
4483
15:34
and that we know without having to outsource it to our devices,
323
922549
3186
15:37
to our search engines and our smartphones.
324
925735
2605
15:40
In the movies, when computers like Watson start to think,
325
928340
4627
15:44
things don't always end well.
326
932967
2583
15:47
Those movies are never about beautiful utopias.
327
935550
3798
15:51
It's always a terminator or a matrix or an astronaut getting sucked out an airlock in "2001."
328
939348
5735
15:57
Things always go terribly wrong.
329
945083
3235
16:00
And I feel like we're sort of at the point now
330
948318
1932
16:02
where we need to make that choice of what kind of future we want to be living in.
331
950250
4083
16:06
This is a question of leadership,
332
954333
1517
16:07
because it becomes a question of who leads the future.
333
955850
3667
16:11
On the one hand, we can choose between a new golden age
334
959517
6183
16:17
where information is more universally available
335
965700
3302
16:21
than it's ever been in human history,
336
969002
1661
16:22
where we all have the answers to our questions at our fingertips.
337
970663
2371
16:25
And on the other hand,
338
973034
1543
16:26
we have the potential to be living in some gloomy dystopia
339
974577
2773
16:29
where the machines have taken over
340
977350
2019
16:31
and we've all decided it's not important what we know anymore,
341
979369
3049
16:34
that knowledge isn't valuable because it's all out there in the cloud,
342
982418
2615
16:37
and why would we ever bother learning anything new.
343
985033
6111
16:43
Those are the two choices we have. I know which future I would rather be living in.
344
991144
3789
16:46
And we can all make that choice.
345
994933
2233
16:49
We make that choice by being curious, inquisitive people who like to learn,
346
997166
3335
16:52
who don't just say, "Well, as soon as the bell has rung and the class is over,
347
1000501
3136
16:55
I don't have to learn anymore,"
348
1003637
1323
16:56
or "Thank goodness I have my diploma. I'm done learning for a lifetime.
349
1004960
3077
17:00
I don't have to learn new things anymore."
350
1008037
2359
17:02
No, every day we should be striving to learn something new.
351
1010396
3307
17:05
We should have this unquenchable curiosity for the world around us.
352
1013703
4192
17:09
That's where the people you see on "Jeopardy" come from.
353
1017895
2725
17:12
These know-it-alls, they're not Rainman-style savants
354
1020620
3081
17:15
sitting at home memorizing the phone book.
355
1023701
2102
17:17
I've met a lot of them.
356
1025803
1316
17:19
For the most part, they are just normal folks
357
1027119
1550
17:20
who are universally interested in the world around them, curious about everything,
358
1028669
4098
17:24
thirsty for this knowledge about whatever subject.
359
1032767
3319
17:28
We can live in one of these two worlds.
360
1036086
2533
17:30
We can live in a world where our brains, the things that we know,
361
1038619
3301
17:33
continue to be the thing that makes us special,
362
1041920
1830
17:35
or a world in which we've outsourced all of that to evil supercomputers from the future like Watson.
363
1043750
6370
17:42
Ladies and gentlemen, the choice is yours.
364
1050120
2648
17:44
Thank you very much.
365
1052768
2252
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Ken Jennings - Know-it-allKen Jennings holds the record for most consecutive wins on the classic American trivia game show, Jeopardy.
Why you should listen
Ken Jennings loves facts. When he was a kid he followed his parents around reciting whatever new fact he had learned -- "Haley's comet or giant squids or the size of the world's biggest pumpkin pie or whatever it was" -- to no end. And his natural curiosity paid off. Today Jennings holds the record for most consecutive wins on the trivia game show Jeopardy, with an astounding 74 wins. (At one point Jennings also held the Guinness World Record for "Most cash won on a game show." Not bad for a trivia nerd.)
In 2011 Jennings participated in the IBM Challenge, which featured him and Jeopardy rival Brad Rutter in a match against IBM supercomputer Watson. Jennings came in second. Watson was first. But Jennings wasn't disappointed in his performance, As he wrote of his loss, "I don't have 2,880 processor cores and 15 terabytes of reference works at my disposal. ... My puny human brain, just a few bucks worth of water, salts, and proteins, hung in there just fine against a jillion-dollar supercomputer."
In 2012 Jennings published the book Because I Said So!: The Truth Behind the Myths, Tales, and Warnings Every Generation Passes Down to Its Kids.
Ken Jennings | Speaker | TED.com