Why would a global, respected computer giant like IBM make a computer that plays Jeopardy? It's, of course, not because they wanted to win a few thousand bucks. Watson is a stepping stone, a path to more complex systems that will answer questions for people. The first dream for Watson is to go into the health care industry. No doctor can read every journal, every article, know every symptom and every disease. But imagine if you had a machine that could instantly parse all that information. Imagine if you could ask it a question, in plain English, and get an answer. Health care professionals could type in a question, look at possible responses, then use their experience and intelligence to put the facts together to solve difficult problems. It would be like having a digital House, the doctor from the popular TV show, at your fingertips, but without the mean streak.
Perhaps the strangest thing (to me) is trying to explain why Watson's achievement is just that, an achievement. Why is it so difficult to explain that, yes, this is a big deal? Perhaps its our conditioning from Sci-fi movies and shows like Star Trek. Computers are just supposed to be able to talk to us, it's only a matter of time. They're going to hold conversations with us, they're going to be our personal butlers, our bartenders, our virtual friends who never tire of our conversation. After all, computers can store vast amounts of information and process their way through complex problems in seconds. They can do many tasks faster than we can. It's just a matter of stuffing more information into it, teaching it human language, and generally bringing together some brilliant programming, right?
No, Final Jeopardy shows us it isn't quite that simple. One good example from the book is one that relates to a passage from Huckleberry Finn. In the passage, Huck and Jim discuss the night sky, and the possible origins of the stars. Huck explains, "Jim ... allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to MAKE so many. Jim said the moon could a LAID them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn't say nothing against it, because I've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done." It's easy for us to decipher the language and the figures of speech, the metaphors here. But for a computer, it may just take this whole passage literally, understanding that frogs in the sky might be the origin of the stars, if it can even get past the difficult language to begin with. No level of programming genius can currently make a computer aware of the world as humans are. Simply stuffing every book in the world into a computer just won't work.
Although many would love to see computers "think" more like us, there are the inevitable doomsday predictions. It's not surprising: computers have taken over many tasks that humans used to do. Final Jeopardy doesn't go this far into computer future, perhaps avoiding the question. After all, brilliant as Watson may be for a computer, he's only answering questions, not running a country or even capable of forming any kind of "scheme" in its electronic brain. But beyond that, the book addresses the more immediate concern: if computers can answer any question intelligently, will there be any use for people to carry the same information in their heads? In other words, will we all lose our jobs?
The book does try to answer that question, but doesn't dwell on it. That's ok, since Watson is an amazing machine in itself with more than enough fascinating aspects to talk about. Stephen Baker is a great storyteller who takes cold computing theory and makes it come alive as a human story. That's perhaps the biggest thing you can take away from this book. Watson's story is still a human one, and computers have a long way to go to catch up with us. This book makes the reader aware that human mind is still an amazing and unique thing, and very hard to duplicate. For now, we can still name our Roombas and curse at our laptops, and rest easy that we're still running the show.
