It’s a shame that this is (necessarily!) such an insular challenge. Everybody knows what chess is all about, I fear that the impact of this game will be limited to the US or the Anglosphere. Just as an example, there has been no Jeopardy on German TV since 2000, it’s not really a part of German pop culture and because of all the puns it doesn’t translate well.
(Question for native speakers: When watching the practice round [0] are you generally able to keep up and answer the questions? The speed with which the game was moving made it nearly impossible for me to follow or enjoy the game. I would like to know what the experience is like for native speakers.)
Well, that's kind of the point. Chess is a hard game, but it doesn't require broad knowledge of a human culture. If you're going to build a machine that exhibits such knowledge, you've got to pick a culture.
I can definitely follow along with this or any game of Jeopardy!, but my problem is that I just don't know all the answers. To me this is part of the appeal.
This is definitely faster-paced than regular episodes of Jeopardy!, but I don't think it's prohibitively fast for native speakers.
It's too bad that Jeopardy! doesn't fit in with international pop culture better. I think it's a perfect fit for a lot of AI problems.
Typically real jeopardy will show the text on the screen. I can get about 30 (sometimes up to 35ish) "questions" for a normal show but it is all about reading it to get those extra few brain cycles.
Don't fret; you can still tune in after another decade or so for a machine to beat us at GO. Given IBM's trending business interest in corporate AI I would not be surprised if it were another IBM sponsored team that finally builds the successful bot.
(Question for native speakers: When watching the practice round [0] are you generally able to keep up and answer the questions? The speed with which the game was moving made it nearly impossible for me to follow or enjoy the game. I would like to know what the experience is like for native speakers.)
[0] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFR3lOm_xhE