Thursday, February 17, 2011

Watson - a machine beats human in Jeopardy!


One of the amazing achievements of IBM Research is the recent triumph of the "Watson" program, whose avatar  is seen above in the Jeopardy! game, beating two human champions.  This raises back the question whether computer thinks, and whether we are getting closer to the "singularity" vision between human and machine intelligence.     While this game is a question answering one,  a complete machine intelligence will also require the ability to detect events and contexts, and react within a changing environment.  I suggested (as a joke) that the next game that a humanoid robot should strive to is the "survivor", which requires other capabilities, like social capabilities, but I think that this challenge is somewhat beyond even the current wildest dreams.   

No comments: