IBM Supercomputer Goes Up Against Jeopardy Elite
Whatis Watson? Answer: the IBM super computer that will take on Ken Jennings andBrad Rutter, the most successful Jeopardy!
champions of all time.
Four-year-old Watson has been fed more than 200 million pages of text and has 3,000processors to compete with its human opponents. Though Watson has a wealth ofknowledge, IBM engineers say the computer’s biggest challenge will beunderstanding exactly what is being asked.
This isn’t the first time IBM has pitted machine against man. IBM’s Deep Bluetook on and defeated chess Grandmaster Gary Kasparov in 1997.
Viewers who tune in to Jeopardy!
onFeb. 14 will immediately notice Watson’s resemblance to an atomic nucleus-completewith changing colors to reflect shifting confidence.
