IBM's Watson computer beats 'Jeopardy!' champions - Los Angeles Times
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IBM’s Watson computer beats ‘Jeopardy!’ champions

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“Jeopardy!” has a new champion, and its name is Watson.

During the Wednesday finale of the three-day “Jeopardy!” challenge that pitted all-stars Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter against an IBM supercomputer, the machine beat the men. Watson finished with $77,147, Jennings with $24,000 and Rutter with $21,600.

The win is a publicity coup for IBM, which created Watson as part of its Great Mind Challenge series. The company hopes to sell Watson’s question-answering technology for use in hospitals and on call-center help desks. The last time IBM created a man-versus-machine challenge of this scale, it built Deep Blue, the chess-playing computer that beat world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

Watson had a huge advantage going into the final match, with a lead of more than $20,000 over Rutter, who was in second place. Though it missed a Daily Double answer regarding “The Elements of Style,” it showed its versatility later, buzzing in correctly on subjects as diverse as “The Simpsons” and halter tops.

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Watson also won Wednesday night’s Final Jeopardy round, offering the correct answer to a clue asking which author’s most famous novel was inspired by William Wilkinson’s “An Account of the Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia.” Watson, Jennings and Rutter all knew the answer: Bram Stoker, author of “Dracula.”

Jennings, ever a good sport, bowed to the new champ.

“I for one welcome our new computer overlords,” he wrote on his video screen, quoting an episode of “The Simpsons.”

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