The Singularity is Coming (on Monday)

In case you didn’t know, Monday is a seminal day for computer science. It’s an event as as important as Newton’s publishing of the Principia in 1687, development of the integrated circuit in the 1940's, or the launch of ARPANet in 1969.

Why? On Monday, IBM’s massively parallel computing cluster, christened “Waston” in honor of company pioneer Thomas Watson, will compete on Merv Griffin’s long running Jeopardy! quiz show. Not impressed? You should be...

IBM has been instrumental in some pretty ground-breaking research for a very long time, long enough that we can reasonably excuse missteps like Domino and Lotus Notes as natural aberrations. Probably the most memorable in recent history was the 1997 defeat of chess legend Garry Kasparov by IBM’s Deep Blue, a victory that received fairly widespread media coverage. No question an impressive feat, Blue’s victory was more a demonstration of advances in processing power than it was of any major advance in artificial intelligence. Watson’s promise, however, is harnessing the true power of machine learning, the holy grail of AI and inspiration to countless visionaries like Asimov, Kurzweil, and Philip K. Dick. And if it wins it will change the landscape of computing forever.

PBS is running an excellent documentary about the IBM team that designed and built Watson and their four-year journey, available online here.

Be sure not to miss Jeopardy! Monday, February 14th through Wednesday, February 16th. You’ll literally be watching computing history in the making.

klc;