By Truman Ruberti ‘16, Staff Writer

With the advent of increasingly powerful computer processors and ever-complex software, Artificial Intelligence, once considered to be the stuff of science fiction novels and wild dreams, is quickly becoming a reality. AI that is comparable to human intelligence could potentially be produced in the coming decades.

Still, Artificial Intelligence in general has always had its issues. It is incapable of picking up on the subtle nuances of human communication; pop culture references and wordplay simply go over a computer’s head, figuratively speaking.

However, when a computer is programmed to fulfill a specific task, it excels at it. In 1997, IBM created the computer “Deep Blue” to play chess, and it beat the (at the time) world champion Garry Kasparov – a moment that went down in history for chess and computer fans alike. However, IBM didn’t stop there, and in 2011 again came back with another supercomputer: Watson.

Charles Lickel, Watson’s creator and IBM Research Manager, said he was inspired in 2004 by Jeopardy contestant Ken Jennings’ 74-game winning streak. He looked at Deep Blue’s victory years earlier and realized that he had the next big challenge for IBM. However, Watson is infinitely more advanced than Deep Blue. Deep Blue specialized in a single game, while Watson was built to compete in a trivia show where it would be required to understand all manner of random questions that would be thrown its way and find an answer in the span of a second. Still, in the face of adversity, Watson managed to come out on top, winning the $1 million prize even when pitted against Jennings himself. Before it could become a champion, however, Watson needed to go through a lot of testing and changes before it could even play properly.

Stephen Baker is a journalist who chronicled the changes Watson went through during its development in his book Final Jeopardy, and who recently came to speak at Newark Academy as a Global Speaker. Having little experience with computers on a technical scale, he instead looked at the implications of what a computer like Watson meant for humanity, and explained to the students the various challenges that the engineers at IBM had to overcome when programming Watson.

When Watson was still in development, its comprehension of questions asked was literal and mind-numbingly slow.  “It makes perfect sense that the process would take a computer two hours. And in the beginning, it did. The fact that they engineered that two-hour process into a mere three seconds is astounding,” Baker said. “I found that when I watched Watson screw up, I had an even greater appreciation for the work involved when it got things right. If it got everything right, Watson wouldn’t be the fallible (and entertaining) machine that it is. It would just be magic–which really is not nearly as impressive.”

So if computers are better than humans at trivia, does this mean that humans are losing their mental superiority? According to Baker, “a machine like Watson acts like a knowledgeable person… Sometimes it’s tempting to think of Watson as a ‘brain.’ But as you deal with it, you see that it’s not even close to a full brain. It just handles information retrieval and question-answering. In short, it’s a tool.” Watson can merely look for certain keywords and run them through complex algorithms, powered by a massive bank of five supercomputers.

It is important to realize that Watson, even with his huge data banks and processing power, can only scratch the surface of what humans can do with their brains in the same amount of time. This should allow those worried to rest easy, since for now, the gulf between man and machine is still great.