‘Jeopardy’ host Ken Jennings ‘deeply skeptical’ of AI, years after losing to supercomputer

“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings once played against a super-intelligent computer, but he says current artificial intelligence is already years ahead.

“I’m deeply skeptical of AI,” Jennings told Fox News Digital at the TCM Classic Film Festival.

“Obviously, these current iterations of LLMs [large language models] would clean Watson’s clock at ‘Jeopardy!’ The technology has moved on. I’ve played with chatbots and ‘Jeopardy!’ clues, and they’re very hard to stump,” he said. 

Jennings, along with fellow “Jeopardy!” all-star Brad Rutter, competed against the IBM Watson computer in 2011.

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“Jeopardy!” host Ken Jennings said he’s “deeply skeptical” of AI. (Christopher Willard/ABC via Getty Images)

Watson specialized in analyzing natural human language and answering complex questions, demonstrating its skills in a two-game exhibition match against Jennings and Rutter. 

Over the course of three days, the computer got many, but not all, of the answers correct. For example, during the first game, it missed the “Final Jeopardy!” clue about U.S. cities.

WATCH: ‘JEOPARDY!’ HOST KEN JENNINGS DEEPLY SKEPTICAL OF AI ‘SLOP’

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“Its largest airport was named for a World War II hero; its second largest, for a World War II battle,” the prompt read. The correct answer was “What is Chicago?” but Watson answered, “What is Toronto?????” with five question marks,

As IBM’s website explained, the multiple question marks indicated Watson wasn’t completely confident in its answer after running its algorithms hundreds of times in approximately three seconds. 

Jennings, along with fellow “Jeopardy!” legend Brad Rutter, faced off with Watson in 2011. (Ben Hider/Getty Images)

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Despite the occasional incorrect answer, Watson ended up winning the $1 million prize, donating its proceeds to charity.

Since then, according to IBM’s website, “The underlying technology has gone on to help organizations predict, optimize and automate business processes across numerous industries. Roughly 70% of global finance institutions and 13 of the top 14 systems integrators use Watson.”

After his defeat, Jennings wrote an essay for Slate at the time, saying, “IBM has bragged to the media that Watson’s question-answering skills are good for more than annoying Alex Trebek. The company sees a future in which fields like medical diagnosis, business analytics, and tech support are automated by question-answering software like Watson.”

He continued, “Just as factory jobs were eliminated in the 20th century by new assembly-line robots, Brad and I were the first knowledge-industry workers put out of work by the new generation of ‘thinking’ machines. ‘Quiz show contestant’ may be the first job made redundant by Watson, but I’m sure it won’t be the last.”

After his defeat by Watson, Jennings said, “‘Quiz show contestant’ may be the first job made redundant by Watson, but I’m sure it won’t be the last.” (Ben Hider/Getty Images)

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Jennings, who is now host of “Jeopardy!” as well as an author, isn’t ready to give over his entire career to AI just yet.

“I work in a creative field and when I watch something or I listen to something, I want to feel like it’s coming from a mind. I want that sense of someone talking to me and I never get that with AI slop,” he said during the festival.

The fear of AI replacing creatives in Hollywood has been a persistent one in the past few years, taking hold during the writers’ and actors’ strikes of 2023.

Earlier this year, Fox News Digital spoke with musician will.i.am, who said true artists don’t need to worry about AI replacing them.

will.i.am told Fox News Digital it’s not artists who should worry about AI, but people like “managers, label execs, finance auditors, attorneys.” (Paras Griffin/Getty Images)

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“The only thing to be worried about is if you’re making music to chase an algorithm,” he told Fox News Digital. “If you’re making music to trend on TikTok. And to do that, you have to really unlock the codes to that matrix. If that’s your whole [hustle], then AI is going to do a better job than that.”

The Black Eyed Peas singer does think people not involved in the creative process in the music industry are the ones who should worry about AI taking away their jobs. 

“The people that are at risk of AI in the music [industry] are managers, label execs, finance auditors, attorneys. If you look at the money that’s being put [in]to make these systems more advanced, Microsoft is giving you a copilot [the company’s AI assistant]. And there’s nothing slowing down how freaking awesome that’s going to be in 2025 version eight. And that’s going to be used for all types of industries,” he said.

“There’s not an army or a fleet of AI music do[ing] everything to the level of copilots or sales force agents. So musicians and hyper-creatives are OK. We’re going to use AI and reinvent and create a whole new industry because of it.”

The Black Eyed Peas singer said creatives will be using AI to “reinvent and create a whole new industry because of it.” (Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)

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He added, “Right now, AI does a good job of everything that we’ve created and can mimic it. But AI is not making things that don’t exist exist. We do that. We created AI. So AI is a mirror. It shows you exactly what’s in front of it.”