Per Ying's reminder, Paul and I watched a three-day Jeopardy show (Feb. 14-16, 2011) featuring Watson competing with Jeopardy's two all-time champions, Brad and Ken. With ups and downs, Watson managed to become a final winner of the one million dollar prize.
It is a very interesting endeavor not only in the sense of entertainment value, but more so in that IBM has pioneered in transforming science fiction into reality. In the process, Watson has revealed his weaknesses such as being born with no hearing, bulky hardware, and some algorithmic errors in missing key parameters like answering Toronto when the question was concerned only with US airports.
However, Watson has shown tremendous potential to many aspects of our life. One of them, as my colleague Heidi pointed out, is that he can help doctors determine drug interactions for their patients who take multiple drugs.
The growth of Watson is just like that of us human beings, from imperfect to perfect. His infrequent lack of confidence has helped to demystify the myth perpetuated by science fiction that solving all our problems is just a computer keystroke away.
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