Kevin Kelly introduces 20Q, a $14 toy you can buy at Amazon that plays the game 20 Questions in the palm of your hand. The origin of this toy is just amazing: Inventor Robin Burgener built the 20q.net web site to play the game with visitors, and learn from every game. After 1 million games over many years, Burgener sliced and compressed the resulting neural net, burned it to a chip and made it a toy. The backstory alone makes this toy worth owning. Does having played 20q.net a bunch of times years ago make me a co-inventor?
May 26, 2005
comments...
I don't understand the sudden brouhaha over the 20Q ball as, while the game is a lot of fun to play, it's been on the market for a while. Z has had one for at least a year, though I suppose she could have dispatched a ninja death squad to steal the early prototype from Burgener headquarters.
The game is most entertaining when it's very wrong. When it asks you whether a given object is edible, and you reply in the affirmative, and it guesses "earwax". Or when it believes you're thinking of a steak and, when you say no, asks you if your clue swims in the ocean.
As mentioned in the article, there are times when its line of questioning seems awry, yet it suddenly produces the correct answer on Question 20. I assume there's some sort of "we've determined the most likely answer on Question 5, so let's beat around the bush until we reach the end" algorithm built into the game.