Watson: 'Why Should I Care?'

by George Simpson, Feb 22, 2011, 8:30 AM

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The ever-thoughtful and entertaining Shelly Palmer wrote of the IBM "Jeopardy" Challenge that "Watson represents American know-how, American ingenuity and clearly demonstrates the power and promise of corporate research and development departments and... is... a... demonstration of technology that will keep us safe and secure in a Cyber-war."

Given the ability of third-world engineers in Egypt to shut down the Internet to try and put down a revolution and the U.S. effort to screw up Iran's nuclear bomb plans by introducing code that threw centrifuges out of alignment enough to ruin them, cyber war is not such a distant prospect,

But I am not sure that a supercomputer that beat Ken in "Jeopardy" is really in a position to keep us from harm. Unless of course the cyber warriors try to come through the front door by providing answers for which Watson can formulate no questions. Such as:

37 - "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?"

Better - "How will my ads perform if I use your technology?"

Transparent - "What do I say if I want to sound like a real industry insider but not reveal I haven't a clue what I'm talking about?"

Opportunity Costs - See above answer.

Creative  - "Who do I blame if the ad response is .00000023 percent?"

Media Department  - "How did I end up here -- I wanted to be in advertising?"

Wenda - "Whose name can I drop so that the person I am talking to will think I am a real industry insider but not reveal I haven't a clue what I'm talking about?"

AOL - "If I want to pad my resume, what fake job can I add that won't provoke a discussion about my duties or experience there?"

Apps or Social Media - "What can I talk about at a dinner party so that everyone will think I'm 'in the know'?"

The Daily - ""What can I talk about at a dinner party so that everyone will think I'm a pretentious butthead?"

Randy - "Whose name it is no longer cool to drop?"

Privacy - "Now that Washington has screwed up everything -- from banks and securities regulation to taxes and foreign policy -- what will they unnecessarily tamper with next?"

Let's Have Lunch - "How do you tell someone in L.A. to f**k off?"

Sorry, it must have gone into spam: "How do you tell the rest of the world to f**k off?"

 

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