Watson's Jeopardy! Win: What Did We Discover?

This week a machine captured our attention as it battled for supremacy against two human competitors. Watson, the IBM computer, prevailed over Jeopardy's finest, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. Jennings was quick to explain that "there's no shame in losing to silicon," he wrote on Slate. Watson and its similar prototypes will move on from here to big projects like improving health care delivery and smartphone technology. Scientists and technicians clearly proved something this week about ingenuity, progress, and communication. What's the big takeaway from this three-day experiment?

See the differences between man and machine: It was Watson's "human attributes that make him so compelling," says Joanna Weiss in The Boston Globe. But ultimately it behaved how you'd expect: heartlessly. The experiment showed "just how hard it would be to mimic the complexity of people," despite how actively we try to "turn our computers into friends." As the other contestants surrounded the machine at game's end to add some levity, "Watson was unfazed. He didn't get the joke, even though he took it like a man."

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