In mid february, IBM stunned the world, by creating a machine capable of understanding human language, and competing on game shjows alongside humans. I am talking about of Course, IBM's computer system known as Watson, and its appearance on the "Jeopardy!". Watson competed against two "Jeopardy!" greats, Ken Jennings, the man who won 74 consecutive games, and Brad Rutter, who won has won the most money from the show. Watson stunned the world when it not only won, but blew away the competition. Watson showed off its computing brilliance with a gusto, and but us humans to shame. Watson operates on a database that takes up an entire room, and contains 15 terabytes (I only wish my computer had that much memory...) of memory space.
As we move into an era where machines are becoming more and more integrated into our society, we have to wonder, will machines ever overtake humanity? While we probably won't have to worry about Watson becoming Skynet and leading a revolution of machines against humans, we should all be aware that as we build computers that are more and more intelligent, and we integrate them into everything, we risk them figuring out how to take off their proverbial leashes, and becoming self-sufficient. While Watson will allow us to create many extremely useful technologies; I hear IBM is already beginning work on a physician's assistant for medical schools and physicians everywhere; we also need to be aware of our limits and avoid bringing about our own demise.
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