Remember when IBM pitted its Deep Blue computer in a chess match against human opponents? Well now, HotHardware reports that IBM has developed a “Question Answering” supercomputer that not only answers questions put to it in plain English, but is good enough to play Jeopardy.

The machine is named “Watson” after IBM’s founder but perhaps a play on Dr. Watson, whose questions to his companion Sherlock Holmes invariably elicited the reply, “Elementary, my dear Watson.” And don’t forget Alexander Graham Bell’s assistant Watson, who was summoned by Bell on the freshly invented telephone to see if it worked. It worked.

Though it sounds like a multimillion dollar parlor trick, in fact IBM has set its sights on no less a rival than Google. Its ability to answer questions in conversational English give it the advantage over the Google keyboard.

And responding to Jeopardy questions is particularly challenging.  Watson needed to be “trained” to recognize those questions, which are really answers.  And, as the video shows, Jeopardy’s format is filled with puns and other wordplay, requiring a nimble intellect.

HotHardware points out that Watson passed some tests with flying colors, but it still has a way to go before it puts Google out of business.  “Watson has a tendency to crash [and] sometimes goes on streaks of getting everything wrong.”

Well, yes, that can be a problem!

Richard Curtis