The category is Battle of Wits. The clue is: It knows nothing for certain, yet may be the greatest challenger in the history of the game show Jeopardy! The question is elementary. What is Watson? For three straight days starting February 14, IBM's latest computer creation, known as "Watson," will be facing two famed Jeopardy! champions, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. There's only a teeny-tiny matter at stake -- can a machine be smarter than man? Four years ago, IBM began work on Watson to follow-up the success of "Deep Blue" -- the computer that famously defeated world champion chess player Garry Kasparov in 1997.
Watson is the next logical step in evolution for computers -- IBM has attempted to build a computer that will attempt to think and learn like a person, and understand language, in a manner. Author Stephen Baker went behind the scenes at IBM for the Watson project, writing the book, "Final Jeopardy: Man vs Machine and the Quest to Know Everything." The book follows the genesis of the project right until the big final showdown (it has been pre-taped.) Speaking to CTV.ca, Baker says language "is the next great hurdle for computers." While voice-recognition has been around for a while, modern day computers do not understand what a word like "operator" means. They just know which function the word serves (where to transfer a caller), but not its meaning. Watson sets out to "understand" the meaning and context of natural language -- everything from irony to riddles.
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