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Cheating WWTBAM

Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2025 10:59 am
by Bob Juch
Today I got a LinkedIn message from a guy who wrote a Watson-like bot to answer the AOL contest questions back in 2005. He expected to win and thought I must have made a better bot to beat him.

He even made a YouTube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuwQYiaAGZE


Re: Cheating WWTBAM

Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2025 11:34 am
by jarnon
I don’t think it’s cheating since Jack developed the bot all by himself. He was decades ahead of his time. They’d never have a contest like that now since today’s bots would win easily.

OTOH it took Jack twenty years to realize a human won the contest and track him down.

Re: Cheating WWTBAM

Posted: Wed Apr 09, 2025 11:48 am
by Bob Juch
jarnon wrote:
Wed Apr 09, 2025 11:34 am
I don’t think it’s cheating since Jack developed the bot all by himself. He was decades ahead of his time. They’d never have a contest like that now since today’s bots would win easily.

OTOH it took Jack decades to realize a human won the contest and track him down.
Exactly. He said in the video he got 75% with the bot. I was over 90%. Does anyone still have the actual numbers from 2005?