Watsonator

Skynet may be closer than we think.

Enter Watson, a supercomputer built by IBM.  He uses a huge network of logarithms and digital information such as databases, news articles, and dictionaries, to analyze questions given to him to solve.  He was put to the test on the game show Jeopardy! against two of the show’s best competitors, Brad Rutter, who won the most money on the show, and Ken Jennings, the record holder for the longest championship streak. 

I thought he was pretty impressive, until I saw the following clip on Youtube.  For the category “U.S. Cities”, the announcer asked, “Its largest airport is named for a World War II hero; its second largest, for a World War II battle”, Watson answered, “What is Toronto?????”.   Check it out:

As a fellow human, I was smug.  Both Brad and Ken answered correctly with confidence, whereas Watson the supercomputer, wasn’t so super after all.  HA!  You would expect Watson to be totally epic and godly.  I mean, he’s built by IBM!  A multinational technology company that’s been around for a hundred years with a pretty good reputation as America’s leading technology-geek-whatcha-ma-call-its. 

Personally, I’m glad that Watson made the mistake.  That means he’s not perfect and the cognitive abilities of the human brain are superior.  For now, anyway.  I’m sure the people at IBM are working to perfect Watson.  I hope they are Terminator geeks, and won’t make Watson too powerful, or else the machine will be commanding us. 

Love,

Bonnie and Clyde, swooning over John Connor <3

PS.  If you want to watch IBM's response to Watson's wrong answer, click here.