Following Jeopardy! Win, Experts Discuss Future Of Computers And Humans.
The AP (2/17, Robertson, Borenstein) reports IBM’s Watson computer soundly defeated its two human opponents in Jeopardy! “Watson’s victory leads to the question: What can we measly humans do that amazing machines cannot do or will never do?” The article offers responses from an array of engineers and scientists, including experts from IBM, Carnegie Mellon University, the Envisioneering Group, Portland State University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, among others. “The next step for the IBM machine and its programmers: taking its mastery of the arcane and applying it to help doctors plow through blizzards of medical information,” among other potential applications for “technical support centers, hospitals, hedge funds or other businesses that need to make lots of decisions that rely on lots of data.”