Watson Conquers Planet Earth -- No Survivors!

It was fun, wasn't it? Much as I've always loathed Jeopardy, the show didn't bother me these last three nights. Let's face it: it wasn't Jeopardy -- it was The Watson Show.

For me, the best part was the second show. We went in knowing that a mere human was tied with Watson -- it was still a horse race at that point. Now, I don't know how you reacted, but for a moment at the beginning of the second show, I was irritated at Watson's obvious dominance. Seemed strange since I was rooting for the guy. But was he just going to answer every question and slam the humans like they were fleas? I felt this would put viewers off and I didn't want that. This was a great educational experience; I wanted it to be positive. Anyway, it was a silly feeling that soon passed.

Only moments later, I was at the other end of the spectrum -- I had goosebumps! I was literally filled with awe as I realized, "Watson is doing it! He's winning a natural-language contest!" This is a new thing on planet Earth, people. We didn't have one of these before. And sure, he's still got a few bugs. Hey, even Star Trek's computers were cranky at times. But it seems we're not far from the day when we will be able to ask computers questions in natural language, and get the answers we need. This is so amazing.

Of course, the second show was also notable because that was when Watson wormed his way into our hearts -- with those odd little bets! The $927 bet on Toronto made me roar with laughter -- and feeling! It made me like him. Did that happen to you, too? 

Great, great idea to have the computer on the show. If everyone was as creative about bringing science to the masses as this IBM crew, maybe we wouldn't have a country of boorish known-nothings. So kudos to IBM, Jeopardy, and everyone involved. That's David Ferrucci, IBM's lead researcher on the Watson project, in the above photo with Watson's avatar. Seems he's the main guy on this one and deserves a goodly portion of the praise. Well done! A marvelous achievement!