After IBM has developed the first backgammon computer to compete with a championship level player (TD-Gammon, mentioned here in our second chapter in the history of backgammon bots), and a chess computer that beat then World Chess Champion (in the famous 1997 Deep Blue vs. Garry Kasparov match, ended in 3.5-2.5 result), IBM research center in Hawthorne, New York is now working on a machine that can beat a man in Jeopardy.

The first Jeopardy bot is called Watson (after IBM founder, Thomas J. Watson), and it is planned to make his debut TV appearance at the popular trivia show sometime during next year. In the meantime, Watson is learning the importance of context in finding the right answer, while practicing in finding the correct information through texts using different textual relationships such as metonyms, paraphrases and others.

Although IBM’s Watson has one of the strongest engines a computer can have (IBM Blue Gene/P), it was not necessarily loaded with huge amounts of data, that, among other reasons, to make it ready for commercial use. IBM hangs high hopes on Watson; after (maybe) becoming the first nonhuman Jeopardy champion, it is expected to use its language skills in assisting people with the numerous tasks that requires finding the right answer as fast as possible. (Read Watson full story on CNN Money).

* and soccer playing bots

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