VIDEO: IBM's Supercomputer to go on Jeopardy!
Way back in April of 2009, IBM announced plans to build a question answering (QA) computing system with the ability to understand complex questions and answer them with enough precision to compete against humans on Jeopardy!
Last year, Dr. David Ferrucci, leader of the IBM Watson project team, said the system named Watson would have to spend a lot of time studying before it was deemed ready to compete.
"The system would have 'read' many, many natural language texts -- books, reference materials, all kinds of information -- and tried to analyze and organize that information in such a way that it can see the meaning of the question and try to figure out what are likely answers," Ferrucci said.
Though the New York Times reports that Watson will not be appearing on Jeopardy! until this fall, we now have a video of Watson in action. Watch below to see what happens when Watson succeeds, and when he fails.
Read more here.
*Image via The New York Times

Wolfram Alpha does something similar by looking through vast amount of information to compute an answer
Probably runs a customized version of Linux, like all of IBM's super/custom computers.
And I agree with mlopinto2k1, this is impressive (or at least very interesting)
no, the AI has to analyze, verify, search, construct the appropriate answer to the question, then respond accordingly.
that solution of simply voice recognition, only brings up relevant information but no specific answer
Only if they build a base on Mars.
For example the words backwards and reverse can often be interchanged with each other and a question or comment can still make perfect sense.
This computer is obviously just programmed to consider words similar by definition to help its understanding of what its asked and to find answers. It may have a selection of answers but picks what it chooses to have the highest % of being correct by relevance.
I can't help but compare it to a search engine and using a feature like google's "I'm feeling lucky" The only difference between it and a search engine is that it already has data in it rather than having to search the web for it.
You can't. This computer is taking such a search to the next level, not only is it retrieving all related potential content to the questions potential keywords, but deciphering based on the question what a precise answer should be. Even googles evolved, complex, keyword tagging and searching doesn't come remotely close to what this is attempting to do. Failing to understand that shows a pretty significant ignorance of what computer technology can and can't do as it stands today.
It is, in fact, on the same level as the way Deep Blue changed the world of cognitive computing after it beat human opponents at chess. They are correct in asserting that this has a same level of significance. Is it true artificial intelligence? No. But you can bet some folks at Google are standing up and taking notice.
pardon me for saying this but we have an einstein here.... as for me this is the starting of skynet. if you think abt it that way our brain is also a search engine
i hope cameron save us
That's only part of the challenge. It has to figure out what the host is asking, and then be able to pick out the answer from the article. It comes naturally for humans, but it's very hard to implement in software and needs lots of processing power.