A Split Subject: Coming To Terms With Artificial Intelligence (In Brief)

HAL is real, and it plays Jeopardy! In an interesting competitive twist, the legendary quiz show featured “Watson,” an IBM supercomputer possessing the ability to understand and process natural language, facing off against past Jeopardy! icons Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings. The computer won. Although this is by no means a sign of the end times, Ken Jennings was closer to the truth than he may believe when he joked “I for one welcome our new computer overlords.” Perhaps he shouldn’t be so hasty.