Past Jeopardy! champs, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, battle IBM's Watson, in a three-day exhibition, the minds of two of the finest veteran human Jeopardy! players against a rookie player. A programmed machine's artificial mind, ended with the humans losing? Ken Jennings hamming it up for the cameras, welcoming the machine as the overlord. But what did it mean? A boost for the Jeopardy! show ratings? A lot of free media advertisement for IBM . And what else?
Of course what IBM showed was that their computer is faster at answering Jeopardy! questions, and suggested that eventually, there might be a computer that can keep up with the human brain. The human brain does so many things besides answering Jeopardy! questions. For example, it does many smart things simultaneously to keeps the human body functioning and aware of its external environment. One day a Watson heir may truly be as smart as a human infant.
Item from the Los Angeles Times --"Steve Canepa, IBM's general manager of global Media and the entertainment industry, offers his take on Watson's performance on Jeopardy!, which the super computer competes against human champions." See the video.
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