Watson

Jeopardy is having IBM's computer Watson play in a tournament against mega-champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter this week. So cool, right? But at the first break, I have to say I was kinda pissed (and I wouldn't be surprised if Jennings & Rutter were too). I mean, seeing Watson's "thought process" was cool and all, but had they not taken into account human reaction times for buzzing in? Jennings & Rutter were only able to ring in four times! (of 15) And a couple of those four were questions the computer didn't know. I wonder if they adjusted the ring-in time for the second half or if Watson just had a harder time with the higher point value questions.

I also might have yelled at the screen when they accepted "Maxwell's silver hammer" as a person. They would have made a human clarify that, but they let it slide for Watson - which seemed grossly unfair.

And was it just me, or were the questions seriously easy? Hoping for more from tomorrow's Double Jeopardy. (Gripe number four: only half a game per day? Really?)

But still, very cool. Not really sure what the usefulness of a Jeopardy-playing computer is to the human race, but cool that it exists. And this huge team of genius people spent the last three years and who knows how much money working on that when they could have been... okay, clearly I can't bitch about people not using their brains for the scientific advancement of humanity since I spend my days writing fluffy romance novels. Shutting up now.

Yay, Watson! (But I'm still rooting for Jennings.)