February 14, 2011

IBM’s Watson supercomputer competes on Jeopardy this week

I normally don’t like game shows, but for the next 3 nights, IBM’s Watson supercomputer will compete on Jeopardy in an exhibition match against the two most successful Jeopardy contestants in history. Watson makes the Deep Blue computer that defeated Anatoly Kasparov in chess look like a toy. It uses real AI, in that the machine teaches itself and understands the human context of questions. It isn’t just a Google and Wikipedia search.

This month, NOVA has an excellent show about Watson. If you miss it on PBS, you can watch it online for free. (It’s yet another reason to save PBS from budget cuts.)

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