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� AMAZIG ANSWERS TO CURIOUS QUESTIONS

What's

IBM's

Watson?

n February2ou, an IBM supercomputer
named Watson trounced two previous
I champions of the US trivia quiz show
jeopardy!. Watson parsed natural language
questions fast enough to beat the quickest
human minds. IBM researchers pre loaded the
computer with hundreds of millions of pages of
data, then armed it with algorithms for
searching and 'reading' text- separating
ASIMO's joints and limbs
subjects, verbs and objects. But this was much are powered by 34 servo
more than a super-powered Google search. motors. When it
Watson used advanced algorithms to 'reason' processes the handshake
sign, it brings its arm and
which of its millions of hypothetical answers hand into position.
was most likely to be true. The 'face' behind the
autonomous, but
jeopardy! podium was backed by a roomful of
programmed to
servers, comparing results in fractions of a perform specific tasks. Sensors in ASIMO's wrists help it to apply the
second until the computer had enough statistica I When approached, it exact amount of force necessary to push its
will stop and wait for
confidence to buzz in. Watson technology is cart, or to step backwards or forwards when
being pushed or pulled.
already being considered as the brains behind
an automated physician's assistant.
Wher did artial intelige begi�
1921 1943 1955 1979 1997
'Robot' coined Cybernetics 'Artificial intelligence' Autonomous robot Google
A science fiction play is the first to Studies help to understand invented The Stanford Cart successfully navigates The web's most influential piece of AI
call automatons 'roboti', Czech for machine learning. John McCarthy uses the phrase in a proposal a room full of obstacles using sensors programming is launched.
'forced labourers'. and software.
for a conference on machine learning.
1936 1949 1956 1997 2011
Turing machine Computer chess First AI program Deep Blue IBM Watson
Polymath Turing describes his 'machine', a Claude Shannon proposes the The Logic Theorist is the first program written World chess champion Gary Kasparov The DeepQA supercomputer uses
theoretical device that establishes the functions for programming a to mimic the human thought process. loses to the IBM supercomputer. language analysis algorithms to beat two
logical foundation for computer science. computer to play chess. former Jeopardy! champions.
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