America Forgot About IBM Watson. Is ChatGPT Next?
In early 2011, Ken Jennings looked like humanity’s last hope. Watson, an artificial intelligence created by the tech giant IBM, had picked off lesser Jeopardy players before the show’s all-time champ entered a three-day exhibition match. At the end of the first game, Watson—a machine the size of 10 refrigerators—had Jennings on the ropes, leading $35,734 to $4,800. On day three, Watson finished the job. “I for one welcome our new computer overlords,” Jennings wrote on his video screen during Final Jeopardy.
Watson was better than any previous AI at addressing a problem that had long stumped researchers: How do you get a computer to precisely understand a clue posed in idiomatic English and then spit out the correct answer (or, as in , the right question)? “Not a hit list of documents where the answer may be,” which is what search engines returned, “but the very specific answer,” David Ferrucci, Watson’s lead in a story called “The Dark Side of Watson.” Four months after its win, the computer was named Person of the Year at the Webby Awards. (Watson’s acceptance speech: “Person of the Year: ironic.”)
