Like million other Jeopardy fans, I too watched the show last week. It was a special edition of this popular quiz show in which a super computer, Watson, challenged two top Jeopardy champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. A joint effort of twenty five learned engineers over a four-year period made Watson, named after IBM’s founder Thomas J. Watson, a reality.
To me, a foreigner in the land of computer science, it’s awesome to see what smart people can do. Through maybe millions of motherboards, chips, and many other peripheral parts, they transplanted human intelligence into a cold steel box. In this case, they groomed Watson with boundless of detailed information. In addition to his deft ability to listen, to speak and to choose clue categories, it appeared he could also push the buzzer quicker than any others. I remembered hearing that having a fast thumb is a must for the contestants of this fast-paced quiz contest. So it is not a big surprise for many of us to see Watson became the latest champion of the favorite American quiz show. After all it is a brain child of twenty five very smart persons.
Putting aside the extraordinary entertainment and advertising value of this brains versus brains contest, the task of Watson’s creators does not end here. Now I am counting on them and their competitors to come up with new generations of computer systems that are friendly to both the users and their environment. - Ayee
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