Watson has recently taken the spotlight by defeating two of the best Jeopardy! players around. The media is buzzing with predictions of a future before seen only in science fiction. Visions of Hal 9000, Vickie (from I, Robot), or even Data (Star Trek) have showered the press and the blogosphere. Certainly, Watson incites such science fiction imaginations. But I think Watson could have more profound implications in our immediate future. I've fallen behind on my reading, and while I can't say that I've seen all of the articles written about Watson, I have yet to come across the implication that, in my opinion, really qualifies Watson as an enormous leap in technology.
Put aside of what Watson was designed to do; that is, play Jeopardy!. Instead, think about how it does it and what it entails. Watson can parse natural language into the computational equivalent (see question 3 here). It can understand the dominant form of human communication and, with it, do whatever it is a computer does. The punchline, as it were, is this: Watson demonstrates the possibility of a new kind of interface with a computer. No longer do we need to know the language of computers in order to interact with them; instead, computers can understand our language. It (he) accepts input in the language on which we operate. And in doing so, it enables the possibility that computer literacy is equal to language proficiency. This shift in interaction, in my opinion, is what makes Watson so revolutionary.
Perhaps Watson is not yet ready to help us fully realize this idea. But for someone who doesn't quite understand the complicated algorithms involved in Watson's programming, I think this is fascinating and inspiring. By creating Watson, IBM has put in our reach what was before only imagined. The next step is to expand Watson's knowledge of words. Then porting this new interface to programs that already exist may be all that's required to expand its utility. I'm sure this process will not be easy, but what I've seen Watson do on Jeopardy! gives me hope that it's not impossible.
