IBM's Watson, Jeopardy, and the future of AI (Artificial Intelligence)

[Joshua Dorkin]

Who else has been fascinated by IBM's Watson computer on Jeopardy? I'm amazed at how far AI has come. Sure, it isn't perfect, as we saw yesterday when it answered Toronto to a question about a city in the US, but these things will get tweaked and perfected.

My brain always seems to go to places that tend to be frightening when it comes to artificial intelligence, though.

While I could imagine all the amazing positive possibilities of this technology (think Watson as a replacement for Google or as a means to organize and understand massive quantities of data that we currently can't do), my mind always goes the direction of T2, AI, and all the other sci-fi films . . .

Of course, many of the sci-fi technologies from our past are now part of our lives.....

So, I wanted to ask everyone about their thoughts. How do you see this technology playing out? What are the industrial uses for it? Does the military start to use AI? What's next?

Oh, and do you think the humans have a chance to come back and beat Watson on the final day of the show?