No doubt about it, the performance of IBM's machine Watson in trouncing two of Jeopardy!'s best players was an astonishing performance. IBM's engineers deserve every accolade they get.
But don't be taken in by the pop media's game of conjuring up images of Terminator-like wars between humans and machines or HALs' taking over the mission.. Watson has a long, long way to go before he--or it--can compete with homo sapiens sapiens.
For one thing, we humans--I proudly add myself to the IBM team--made Watson. We humans make earth-moving machines and steamships that outdo humans' abilities to shovel or swim by factors of thousands, maybe millions. But we don't go around saying, Oh my heavens, they will replace us. Nonsense. They multiply our own abilities. So does Watson. He--or it--will answer more questions faster and better than we can. Swell! We will use Watson. We are a long way from Watson using us.
For another, we have 10 billion neurons in our brains and 100-500 trillion synapses. And those neurons and synapses are analog devices, summation machines capable of variable responses, not just the 1 and 0 of Watson's circuits. Immense as Watson is, he is not as immense as the human brain. We don't have a technology to match that brain. I won't say we never will. ("Never" claims are foolish in today's scientific world.) But until we do, Watson will be just another machine that we use to multiply our own abilities.
Third, and most important, it wasn't Watson who was asking the questions, it was Alex Trebek. Watson doesn't have those dopaminergic circuits, those SEEKING circuits, that leads us to puzzle ourselves with the hard questions that lead to scientific and other discoveries. The day is far off when an IBM machine, even one as smart as Watson, will pose questions of itself like, Why do organisms get cancer? Where is the farthest planet? What happens in your mind if I play this music upside down?
Regis Philbin on TV this morning said of Watson, "I think he's a dope. I really do." Dumb as it is, that statement comes from a question, Is Watson intelligent, and what is intelligence? It's a question Watson itself can't ask.
