Meet, Cower Before, Watson, the Computer That Beats You At Jeopardy (Video)

Update: Watson tied with human being, Brad Rutter for $5,000 at the end of first round of Jeopardy: Man Versus Machine. See the battle in Ones and Zeros.

This week marks the 15th anniversary of Garry Kasperov’s monumental match against Deep Blue, in which computers most famously schooled humans at chess. And it’s the 14th anniversary of the would-have-been rematch, which didn’t happen because IBM decided not to take its chances: it dismantled Deep Blue instead.

But a lot can happen in 14 years. Next week, us carbon-based lifeforms will see how we fare against the silicon variety in intelligence, at least as defined by Jeopardy. In last night’s fantastic episode of NOVA, streamed in parts below, we meet Deep Blue’s evolutionary successor. What do we learn? That we’re pretty damn hard to copy. But computers have some tricks up their sleeves. They are still defenseless however before stupid jokes made at their expense. Says Watson project head David Farrucci of a Trebek stand-in:

“He’s making fun of and criticizing a defenseless computer that represents people with real feelings, real families. OK, maybe I don’t have feelings, but my kids have feelings!”

While we parse that, we’re also reminded that Jeopardy is still awesome – even if it’s about to make us humans look weak. And you know what? I sort of think it is.

See Watson’s first real competition with humans in part 4; stop laughing so much at Watson in part 5, when you learn how Watson makes a guess, using IMDB and machine learning and everything in between. Watch the rest and let your grey matter get either very depressed – or, if you can’t wait for the Singularity – very excited.

See more at NOVA.