Computer Bests Humans on TV Game Show

'Watson' is now working on assisting doctors and patients

February 18, 2011

'Jeopardy!' champions Ken Jennings, left, and Brad Rutter, right, look on as an IBM computer called 'Watson' beats them to the buzzer to answer a question during a practice round.

Watson was not stumped by the show’s unique answer-and-question format in which players get clues in the form of answers and must answer with a question. Watson got its clues via electronic text.

The super computer bested veteran Jeopardy champs Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in all categories: the arts, popular culture, science, geography, wordplay and more. The computer won by sorting through 80 trillion instructions a second.

With that victory behind it, Watson now heads to the hospital.

Its designer, IBM, has signed agreements with Columbia University Medical Center and the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Eliot Siegel, vice chairmain of Radiology at Maryland's medical school, says the advances in artificial intelligence embodied in the Watson computer show great promise for medicine.

"With its ability to understand concepts and natural language processing and its ability to form multiple hypotheses and respond very rapidly, holds the promise to be able to explore information in the electronic medical record and also for help with diagnostic and therapeutic planning and just general decision making in medicine."