Watson Wins Jeopardy, but Is His Intelligence Artificial?

Making News

Egypt Marks Week without Mubarak, Other Governments Crackdown ()

In the Middle East today crackdowns continued on anti-government protesters. In Egypt, where People Power deposed a president, another enormous crowd turned out for Friday prayers on Tahrir Square.  The message was that the revolution is not over.  Dan Murphy is in Cairo for the Christian Science Monitor.

Guests:

• Dan Murphy: Staff Writer, Christian Science Monitor

Main Topic

Are Computers Learning to Think? ()

In 1997, IBM's "Deep Blue" computer defeated chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov. This week, "Watson" defeated two champion humans on Jeopardy. Because Watson answered some tricky questions, IBM says the machine has "the ability to understand natural human language." Watson isn't available on your laptop — yet.  It's a supercomputer the size of 10 refrigerators, programmed by 25 IBM scientists with the equivalent of one million books, including entire encyclopedias. It performs 80 trillion operations per second.  But does Watson really think? Super-computers already invest on Wall Street and land airplanes at busy airports. What will they do next? Is artificial intelligence nearing the point where it replaces not just our jobs but also our minds?

Guests:

• David Gondek: Researcher, IBM Watson Research Center
• Paul Saffo: Consulting Professor in Forecasting, Stanford University
• Douglas Hofstadter: Professor of Cognitive Science, Indiana University
• Brian Christian: Philosophy and science writer

Links:

• IBM Watson Research Center on Final Jeopardy and the future of Watson
• Hofstadter's 'Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought'
• Christian's 'The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us about What It Means to Be Alive'

Reporter's Notebook

Public Employee Unions Show Their Strength in Wisconsin ()

Republicans control the Wisconsin state Senate 19-to-14, but it takes 20 votes to act on fiscal matters. So Democratic state senators have crossed state lines to prevent a vote on Republican Governor Scott Walker's plan to strip public employees of collective bargaining rights. On Wednesday, President Obama invited a Wisconsin TV reporter for a White House interview, so he could comment on the dispute. Is the President taking the issue nationwide? Steven Greenhouse, author of The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker, covers labor issues for the New York Times.

Guests:

• Steven Greenhouse: Labor Reporter, New York Times, @greenhousenyt