I finally watched the Jeopardy! episodes in which two human champs competed against Watson, a new computer that takes Artificial Intelligence to a new, impractical function. Competing on a game show? I dunno. All I can think of is that there's a power failure during the game and the computer winds up with lovely parting gifts and a case of Turtle Wax.
Yeah, I know. It was a stunt to show off the computer. What it wasn't was a test of knowledge since Jeopardy! is only partly about being able to ask questions. It's also about being able to push a button at precisely the right moment. So when Watson clobbered past champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, what we learned was that a computer can be set up to time the pushing of a button better than a human. That's not a surprise, nor is it very useful information. I'd be interested to find out if it knew more answers than either Ken or Brad but the contest wasn't about that.
Ken Jennings wrote about his experiences here. I'd be curious to hear how he thinks he would have fared if they'd built a slight delay into Watson's button-pushing mechanisms…just enough to allow someone with fingers to get in before him. If the Jeopardy! people ever offer Ken a rematch, he oughta insist on something like that.