Tonight on Jeopardy, the first day of the IBM Watson challenge, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter will go up against IBM’s super computer in the historic match of man versus machine. In place of a person, a computer screen with an animated graphic will stand representing Watson, but it’s not just some random icon.

The avatar is actually a work of generative art designed by Joshua Davis and implemented by Automata Studios. The avatar changes based on a number of factors such as confidence in an answer and question type for a total of 27 states. For example, when Watson enters an answer correctly, the swarm around the sphere flows to the top and turns green. When Watson answers incorrectly, the swarm turns orange and flows to the bottom.

Get the full description and a sense of the process in the video below.



In the battle between man versus machine, who are you rooting for?

[Video Link | Thanks, Branden]