IBM's Watson Takes on Jeopardy! Champs

Over the past four years, a team of IBM scientists have set out to accomplish a grand challenge – build a computing system that rivals a human’s ability to answer questions posed in natural language with speed, accuracy and confidence.  The computing system named Watson, will compete on Jeopardy! against the show’s two most successful and celebrated contestants -- Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter -- on February 14, 15 and 16.

Jeopardy! provides the ultimate challenge because the game’s clues involve analyzing subtle meaning, irony, riddles, and other complexities in which humans excel and computers traditionally do not.

Watson's ability to understand the meaning and context of human language, and rapidly process information to find precise answers to complex questions, holds enormous potential to transform how computers help people accomplish tasks in business and their personal lives. Watson will enable people to rapidly find specific answers to complex questions. The technology could be applied in areas such as healthcare, for accurately diagnosing patients, to improve online self-service help desks, to provide tourists and citizens with specific information regarding cities, prompt customer support via phone, and much more.

Last night Watson held his own and was tied with all-time Jeopardy champ Brad Rutter after the first round. Watson and Rutter both tallied $5,000 in winnings, while Ken Jennings, whose streak of 74 consecutive wins is a Jeopardy record, was in third with $2,000.

The Watson program runs on IBM's new massively parallel POWER7 processors, which the company rolled out last year.