IBM's Watson

    Every night my husband, Ben, and my daughter, Elizabeth, and I watch Jeopardy and see who can answer the most questions.  Well, I have to say most nights Ben wins the challenge. When we were first married, the same Jeopardy was run back to back each night.  When I realized this, I would watch the first Jeopardy before Ben came home from work (I got home earlier than he did.) and would memorize as many questions as I could.  My short-term memory is pretty good!  Needless to say, he could not get over how smart his wife was and was also pretty bummed at getting beaten. One night he arrived home early and caught me scoping out the first Jeopardy!  All I can say is that it was good while it lasted.  I still get a chuckle out of thinking about his expression when I was killing him at Jeopardy and his expression when he found out I was cheating!
    Recently, I heard that the two best Jeopardy contestants would be going up against a computer system named Watson.  A little research led to the IBM site IBM: The next Grand Challenge.  You see, IBM attempts what they call "Grand Challenges" such as having a computer system beat a chess master at chess or mapping the human DNA genome.  This time they have attempted to create a computer system that understands natural language content and can search and analyze data.  IBM feels that this system could give new insights into - and gleen new information from - existing data. 
     IBM speculates that this new technology would be used in future data management and analytics.  We have smart phones, smart cars, smart homes, and now we could have smart cities.  IBM feels that this technology could integrate transportation, utility usage, and health care (to name a few) into a system that maximize a city's resources.  This is a quote from the website:

     "Jeopardy! The IBM Challenge poses a specific question with very real business implications: Can a    system be designed that applies advanced data management and analytics to natural language in order to uncover a single, reliable insight — in a fraction of a second?"
   
    Look for the advertisements for the Jeopardy challenge and if you would like to see the videos and learn more about Watson, go to:
http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/what-is-watson/the-next-grand-challenge.html