20Q.net, the wildly popular online game and artificial intelligence, played its 50 millionth game on April 16th. To date, the game has asked close to one billion questions! (Relatively speaking, one billion seconds is roughly 31 years!) And, when we take into account all the time it has spent playing games, we’d put the 20Q’s age at about 95 “people” years. The site hosts tens of thousands of players daily, using every game as a learning opportunity and getting a little smarter each time. What was the object that stumped the 20Q A.I. the last time you played?
With this milestone also comes a series of 20Q specialty games. Using the same A.I. engine, 20Q is quickly becoming an expert in Music, Sports, Movies, T.V. and People. It won’t be long until it tackles a famous wizarding world, a time traveler with a British accent, a well-known street, and a Recognized Text of the Past. It’s too soon to tell but, someday, 20Q might even help you select a baby name (check out the 20Q Name Game.)
20Q is an artificial intelligence, a website, a company and a phenomenon that speaks for itself at http://20q.net. Players think of an animal, vegetable, mineral, or other item and 20Q guesses what they are thinking in twenty questions, or less.
Inventor Robin Burgener has nurtured the technology since its creation in 1988. The 20Q A.I. played 2,000 games in the first 10 years of its existence. In the past eighteen months, that number has exponentially increased to over 50 million games. 20Q has been translated into 22 languages, and the specialty versions of the handheld electronic game, 20Q Rock and Pop, Sports and Junior are in stores now. 20Q Mobile for the cell phone is licensed to I-play. The 20Q technology also has strong potential for applications in medical devices, search engines, tech support, machine diagnostics, and large e-commerce websites.
Licensed to Radica Games, Ltd. and Mattel, more than 12 million of the popular and addictive handheld versions have been sold. The handheld 20Q game won the 2006 Toy Industry Association’s Electronic Toy of the Year Award and received U.K. Toy Retailers’ Association Special Recognition Award. Now that 20Q.net is available in over 20 languages, even more people around the world can test its knowledge.
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I absolutely love my 20Q! I’ve always been a big fan of games, and being single, there aren’t too many of them I get the opportunity to play! 20Q is a lot of fun, and I’m always surprised when it guesses my item, which is most of the time!
Just for fun, I tried “penis”. 20Q guessed “toy” and then “organ”. *LOL*
I need to get out more…
One of my coworkers has a brother who works for 20Q. He is one of their first employees… what a riot these games are!
…obviously, 20Q was right…you just need to read between the lines. “toy”+”organ” = “penis”…there ya go.