In the end, the humans on “Jeopardy!” surrendered meekly.
Facing certain defeat at the hands of a room-size I.B.M. computer on Wednesday evening, Ken Jennings, famous for winning 74 games in a row on the TV quiz show, acknowledged the obvious. “I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords,” he wrote on his video screen, borrowing a line from a “Simpsons” episode.
From now on, if the answer is “the computer champion on “Jeopardy!,” the question will be, “What is Watson?”
For I.B.M., the showdown was not merely a well-publicized stunt and a $1 million prize, but proof that the company has taken a big step toward a world in which intelligent machines will understand and respond to humans, and perhaps inevitably, replace some of them.
This is a major step in the development of artificial intelligence. To read the rest of the article, click here.