The New York Times discusses the upcoming matchup between two human "Jeopardy!" (a U.S. television game show) experts and one awesome IBM computer (called "Watson"). The computer is not hooked up to the Internet but it has a huge database of information. Importantly, though, Jeopardy! questions are phrased in such a way that a pure brute force approach to answering questions may perform rather poorly. The program will air on Feb. 14, 15, and 16. Here are a couple of paragraphs from the article:
It does not matter who will win this $1 million Valentine’s Day contest. We all know who will be champion, eventually. The real showdown is between us and our own future. Information is growing many times faster than anyone’s ability to manage it, and Watson may prove crucial in helping to turn all that noise into knowledge.
Dr. Ferrucci and company plan to sell the system to businesses in need of fast, expert answers drawn from an overwhelming pool of supporting data. The potential client list is endless. A private Watson will cost millions today and requires a room full of hardware. But if what Ray Kurzweil calls the Law of Accelerating Returns keeps holding, before too long, you’ll have an app for that.
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