I.B.M.’s Watson, named after IBM’s founder, Thomas J. Watson, is an artificial intelligence program running on approximately 2,500 parallel processor cores, each able to perform up to 33 billion operations a second. Designed to answer questions posed in natural language, Watson will play “Jeopardy!” next week against the show’s top two living players, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter.
Neil Weinberg imagines life in a world where we carry around Watson’s decedents in the palms of our hands:
The kind of knowledge we choose to remember is going to be radically different because Watson’s decedents are going to be in the palms of our hands, reminding us that the Panama Canal was completed in 1914. It’s going to be like Wikipedia, but with more accuracy and less pesky “reading.” It’s Google meets AskJeeves meets a university library. Every ounce of human knowledge is going to be put in one place, and it’s going to be accessible just by asking for it. …This technology, this revolution, this computer is going to make us all geniuses.
Richard Powers brings us back to earth:
Should Watson win next week, the news will be everywhere. We’ll stand in awe of our latest magnificent machine, for a season or two. For a while, we’ll have exactly the gadget we need. Then we’ll get needy again, looking for a newer, stronger, longer lever, for the next larger world to move.
For “Final Jeopardy!”, the category is “Players”: This creature’s three-pound, 100-trillion-connection machine won’t ever stop looking for an answer.
The question: What is a human being?
Next week’s grand prize is $1 million; second place wins $300,000; third place $200,000. Jennings and Rutter will give hald of their winnings to charity; IBM will donate all of its.