What is the next great challenge in computing?

Monopoly.

@filmfann in real life… maybe because I’ve lost to the monopoly computer player years ago… you just need to know how to cheat, by making fake players who give you everything… like how Watson knew where all the Daily Doubles are… Ken Jennings could have just tripped on the plug for Watson’s answer device .

Well, they still aren’t creative. Maybe a more artistic competition? That, or Calvinball.

I think if a computer can take hit songs from the last few years and take what it “thinks” made those songs hits, and then write it’s own song that became a “hit” it would impress me.

Ive been thinking about watson a lot lately and I honestly dont get why its such a big deal. I think beating a human in chess is a far greater accomplishment. Can someone fill me in on why jeopardy is so big? I mean its essentially a glorified search engine to me it seems. Chess is something that is always changing based on how the human reacts so the computer must replan and such. Jeopardy remains static no matter how the human interacts.

I get that there is a lot of word play and such in jeopardy so coding around that seems like a task but I just dont see it as the amazing feat everyone is making it out to be. I dont know, maybe im not considering all the other amazing possibilities the computer has….

@uberbatman having a computer that can understand language is an AI programmers dream…

@uberbatman The wordplay, and the inference that the question format necessitates, would cause Google to return garbage. Chess is comparatively easy to represent mathematically, and the rules impose limits on the volume of options available. Language, with its nuances and general arbitrariness, is much more complicated.
Jeopardy doesn’t actually pit the contestants against each other; rather, they try to see who can best face off against the writers. The mortals in this competition were effectively brought in as benchmarks.

@talljasperman & @Nullo both very good points, I didnt really think about it like that.

Do you suppose Watson would pass the Turing Test?

@uberbatman Id’ be willing to try it. Cleverbot does not pass the Turing Test, though this is likely due to the fact that it’s being taught by everybody on the Internet. Though it does sing a mean Still Alive.

Lets see if IBM could put together a box that could out-party Lindsey Lohan, out-snort Charlie Sheen and out-bong an Olympian like Michael Phelps.

Passing the Turing Test.

Ability to read any captcha.

Developing a 5-qubit or even a 30-qubit quantum computer.

@mattbrowne Not the captchas! Then we’ll be invaded by spambots, which will bring about the Robot Apocalypse!