When The Answer Is “I’m Sorry, I Can’t Help You With That”

Remember back in 2011, when ace Jeopardy players, Ken Jennings (now the temporary host of the show) and Brad Rutter, had to meekly surrender to Watson, the giant IBM computer? For IBM researchers, Watson’s victory was a big step toward a world in which “intelligent machines will understand and respond to humans, and perhaps inevitably, replace some of them.” And Mr. Jennings, graciously acknowledging defeat, wrote on his screen “I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords” (see Computer Wins On ‘Jeopardy!’: Trivial, It’s Not). At the time, Watson was a “question answering machine” of a specific type . . .