Skynet lives! Watch IBM’s Watson crush puny humans in Jeopardy

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

This isn’t specifically movie related, other than my Skynet reference up there, but it is pretty damn cool and I think something that would interest a lot of you. Jeopardy has been hyping for months that IBM has built a computer to compete against the fastest smartest Jeopardy-playing humans alive, and the time has finally come for it to show its stuff.

Its name is Watson, and it essentially searches a database for information relating to the question at hand, and makes a predictive guess based on what it’s found. Seems like cheating, but when you have to do it in less than a second, it’s quite a bit more impressive.

Below I’ve posted the first episode that aired where Watson goes to town on the former champs. Well, he destroys them at first, but in part two things start to get a bit wobbly. He particularly has problems with decades and Voldemort. Guess he’s scared to say his name.

There’s also pretty cool behind the scenes footage about how exactly they built and taught Watson to think like a human, and this has far reaching implications past mere game shows. Check it out below: