Outdated Web 2.0 Analogies For $500, Alex

I hope you had a good weekend.

I spent mine lamenting my Sony big screen going on the blink, and then acquiring more frustration by chasing around a little white ball.

Oh, and trying to find something else on the news other than the swine flu (Insert appropriate charcterization here A. Pandemic B. Epidemic C. Hysteria

Which brings us to some very exciting news coming out of IBM Research this morning.

But first, a quick IBM flashback.

In 1997, I had the opportunity to participate in and witness the Kasparov v. Deep Blue series of chess matches, and had a number of IBM amigos who worked on the Web site.

It was via the Web site that I followed a number of the matches, but I also had the opportunity to attend one match in person at the Equitable building in midtown Manhattan.

Even it wasn't quite in person, as Garry Kasparov and the Deep Blue team were situated about 50 stories above us, while we pawns and press and mere mortals sat in the audience following the play-by-play as we watched a huge chess board on display above the stage.

I've never seen something quite so exciting.

I know, I know, chess? Exciting?

What made it so was the element of Man v. Machine.

The drama was inherently built in to the challenge.

It was John Henry all over again.

Only this time it was about brains more than brawn -- although judging by the toll the matches seemed to take on Kasparov, there was a little bit of brawn involved as well.

Well, and there's really no other way to say this....They're baaaccccckkk.

Yes, the IBM Research team has been hard at work in their labs, this time working on a highly advanced Question Answering system codenamed "Watson" that soon will be competing with other mere humans on that gameshow of gameshows, Jeopardy.

Specifically, Watson will be attempting to understand via artificial intelligence very complex questions and answer with enough precision and speed to compete in realtime Jeopardy games.

As Dr. David Ferrucci, project lead for Watson, explained, "The challenge is to build a system that, unlike systems before it, can rival the human mind's ability to determine precise answers to natural language questions and to compute accurate confidences in the answers. This confidence processing is key. It greatly distinguishes the IBM approach from conventional search."

Me, personally, I'd like to see Watson take on HAL from "2001," but of course, we all know HAL's just a fictional character in a movie.

Right? Right, HAL? You're not real, are you buddy.

There is a flower within my heart
Daisy, Daisy
Planted one day by a glancing dart
Planted by Daisy Bell

I'll take the Turing Test for $500, Alex?

Alex?!?!

While I get my computer back in working order, please visit that other great bastion of artificial intelligence, YouTube, to see a video outlining the Watson and Jeopardy project.