Watson, a computer system will play Jeopardy!, the popular TV trivia game show, against human contestants. It extracts meaning from natural spoken (English) language.
The system breaks a question into natural-language pieces, searches its own databases (not the Internet) for “related knowledge,” and then finally assembles a result.
Demonstrations of Watson likely later this year. The televised matchup–complete with hosting by the show’s Alex Trebek–likely next year.
Trebek will speak the questions aloud, and someone will feed the also into the machine in text format during the show.