<p><em><a id="internal-source-marker_0.41981293072370107" href="http://www.jeopardy.com/">Jeopardy!</a></em> champion Ken Jennings points to his <a href="http://www.ibm.com/us/en/sandbox/ver1/">IBM</a> supercomputer opponent,<a href="http://www-943.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/"> Watson</a>, during a practice round for the TV game show last month. Jennings and fellow human contestant Brad Rutter competed against Watson in a three-episode tournament this week in the U.S.—and were summarily beaten by the computer last night.</p><p>Watson boasts a nearly 3,000-computer-processor "brain," which can perform various tasks simultaneously—an ability that could be unique and potentially very important in artificial intelligence, or AI, research, computer scientists say.</p><p>The "Watson program may turn out to be a major advance, because unlike most previous AI projects, it does not depend mainly on a single technique, such as reinforcement learning [learning via reward and punishment], or simulated evolution ... but tries to combine multiple methods," MIT computer scientist<a href="http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/"> Marvin Minsky</a> wrote in an email.</p><p>Minsky added, however, that Watson's contribution and importance to the field of AI won't be known until IBM publishes a technical report about the computer.</p><p>(Read a <a href="http://blogs.ngm.com/blog_central/2011/02/jeopardy-20-ill-take-computers-who-form-questions-for-answers-for-100.html">Q&amp;A about Watson with the author of <em>Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything</em></a>.)</p>