Dear IBM: I am thoroughly impressed! Watson has dominated the human competition in the final round. I am in sympathy with competitor Ken Jennings - and will welcome our new computer overlords...
(Eventually. Grudgingly. Maybe.)
In all seriousness - a fantastic exhibition match. I am EXCITED to have seen this in my lifetime! The only thing better would have been to be in the audience.
The language recognition, the ability to recognize idom and wordplay is fascinating - Watson is certainly a well designed, well coded machine. And I was pleasantly surprised at how its voice gave it tangible personification, in spite of a lack of facial features. Even Alex Trebek refered to it as "he" once or twice. As far as its ability for data retrieval and analysis, there were a few notable instances where the humans still took the advantage (at least temporarily).
An interesting case study in rapid information retrieval between humans and computers. Might shed some interesting light on the argument that Google can replace reference librarians on the basis of cost savings alone. Watson may have answered the majority of questions correctly, but the instances where it failed were odd...not what I expected. Not to mention - it's hardly cheap!
I really hope this gets re-aired for more analysis!
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