Watson the Brain

I'm not sure how many of you watch Jeopardy, but I do. I was obsessed during Ken Jennings run. He is remarkably intelligent. Well, this week he and another guy competed against an IBM computer creation. Of course, the computer new pretty much everything and kicked their trash. Ken did come in 2nd place though. It's amazing how smart they made this computer. It could understand Trebek's voice and questions. It responded properly and gave proper responses. It was just amazing. It was cute when it would mess up.

I enjoyed this article written by Ken Jennings since the taping. He's a very funny guy with a grounded sense of humor. He spoke highly of Watson and the computers programming. It also made me think about what is to come of artificial intelligence. I think it's awesome, however I do worry about what might happen. I don't think it will be terminators and the like, but what about an elimination of jobs. Factories are needing less people due to the ease and efficiency of programmable machines. Will that happen to us? What about the jobs we do everyday?

And seriously? Is there anything worse when calling tech support than to get a guy across the world to try and help you? I would say getting a robot to try to help me would be worse. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what the future holds for us.

Any thoughts?