Watson, Technology, Trade and what kind of job will you have after college?
You may have heard or watched on TV how "Watson," the artificial intelligence system developed by IBM, soundly defeated the reigning human Jeopardy TV show champions in recent contests. In the game of Jeopardy contestants are read an 'answer' and the first to guess the corresponding 'question' wins. For example, in the 'Olympic Oddities' category Watson was the first to correctly say "What is a leg" given the 'answer' "it was the anatomical oddity of U.S. gymnast George Eyser, who won a gold medal on the parallel bars in 1904." Watson's impressive trouncing of humans that everyone considered highly educated experts has led many people to ponder whether we might not in fact be living through the eve of an impressive new technological revolution that may foist a radical new world upon us. It seems only a matter of time before this kind of technology replaces all kinds of humans. Until recently many economists w...