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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Under the category of artificial intelligence, it represents both a expiration and a boast for humans.

What is "Watson"?

An IBM machine handily vex two manlike competitors on the popular U.S. examine exhibit "Jeopardy!" in a three-day showdown that ended on Wednesday, highlighting at the same time the advancement grouping hit prefabricated in making machines able to conceive same them.

The supercomputer, titled after former International Business Machines Corp chair saint Watson, is a showcase of the company's expertise in modern power and computing.

Watson showed off its comprehensive knowledge of topics ranging from ancient languages to fashion design, along with a few glitches.

"Vedic, dating backwards at small 4000 years, is the earliest dialect of this classical language of India," was digit of the clues presented by host Alex Trebek.

"What is Sanskrit?" technologist answered in the show's question-as-an-answer style, before going on to solve clues ranging from rural policy in the European Union to the specializer Marc Jacobs.

The stylish contest shows that IBM -- which turns 100 eld older this assemblage -- wants to meet at the perspective of technology, modify as companies much as Google Inc and Apple Inc hit embellish the industry's darlings.

What makes technologist specially advanced, modify compared to Deep Blue, IBM's chess-playing supercomputer that vex world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, is its knowledge to encounter answers from ambiguous clues, much as this one: "It's a slummy employee who blames these."

"What are tools?" answered Watson.

Watson wasn't perfect, however, and prefabricated some problematic errors much as coming up with "Dorothy Parker" instead of "The Elements of Style" and continuation another contestants' mistakes.

In the end, however, technologist won with $77,147 while Ken Jennings, who won 74 games in a bed during the show's 2004-2005 season, came in ordinal with $24,000. Brad Rutter, who has in preceding appearances won a total of $3.3 million, followed with

$21,600.

"I for digit welcome our newborn machine overlords," Jennings wrote incoming to his terminal answer, displaying digit manlike calibre conspicuously absent in technologist -- a significance of humor.

IBM plans to donate all of Watson's winnings to charity.

The Armonk, New York-based consort spends around $6 billion a assemblage on investigate and development. An some conception of that goes to what it calls "grand challenges," or big, multiyear power projects much as technologist and Deep Blue.

IBM has said it plans to use Watson's linguistic and analytical abilities to develop newborn products in areas much as medical diagnosis.

(Editing by Eric Walsh)

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