IBM Supercomputer Watson Takes On Jeopardy Champs

Watson, the supercomputer designed to play the television game Jeopardy, takes on two former champions this week in a show of the most advanced artificial intelligence created to date.

The computer is not just designed to play the game, it’s also engineered to compete with human players. This means that the computer will not just need to be able to find answers to questions quickly, it must also have the ability to parse and understand the nuances of the answers provided, something that has eluded attempts at artificial intelligence in the past.

However, the computer does not ‘hear’ the answers, but rather has the questions fed to it in text at the same time that the human competitors hear them.

Watson also has to push a physical buzzer as well. However, Watson is not connected to the Internet, as many have speculated, querying an internal database.

However, Watson does not have the ability to process competitor answers or mistakes.