IBM Watson: The Deep Blue of Jeopardy

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Remember Deep Blue? The chess playing supercomputer from IBM? Well, IBM wants to show up us mere carbon-based lifeforms once again by trotting out the Watson, a whole new supercomputer to take on the mecca of triviadom, Jeopardy.

IBM’s Watson, bowed last year, introduced us to a computer that worked a lot like a Google search, allowing regular people to use everyday, “natural” language to get information. But Jeopardy represents the truest test yet for the Watson, to search for information to questions phrased Jeopardy-style, which is laden with puns and tricks and assorted whatnot that’s not exactly linguistics-friendly.

Apparently, IBM’s already pitted Watson against Jeopardy on a few occasions. It’s won a few and lost a few, and that was sufficient to get the folks out at Jeopardy interested in seeing how Watson fares on TV. Hopefully the massive computer won’t get stage fright and go all WOPR (or worse yet, HAL…or even Skynet!) on us. Get Ken Jennings in there and you’ve got a match!