In case you missed it, last night was the debut of Watson – IBM’s supercomputer that was designed to compete against humans on Jeopardy. It was the first of three episodes featuring Watson, and this one provided more background information about the computer than actual gameplay.
In the little bit of action that we did see, Watson had an expectedly lame Stephen Hawking voice, failed pretty miserably at Harry Potter trivia, and did not come up with a single creative joke about Alex Trebek’s Canadian heritage.
As a closet Jeopardy fan, I’ve been intrigued by the story of Watson ever since it was first announced publicly a few months ago. But when you hear that IBM devoted over three years of research, engineering and staff to it (which may add up to more than $1 billion) – part of me has to wonder if it’s really worth it just to prove that a computer can take all the information on the Internet and use it to win a game show.
Fortunately, now we know that Watson has a greater purpose than just answering clues in the form of a question. According to IBM, the technology behind Watson will be experimented with in several different areas. The most interesting one at this point is called “Watson, M.D.” – a system that could theoretically listen to your medical symptoms and deliver a diagnosis without any interaction from those quacks in the doctor’s office. And if you’re lucky, maybe your computer doctor will also invite you to play Rhyme Time.
