Well, Watson's victory tonight in game 2 was probably its most impressive performance. The human champs put up a much tougher fight but Watson still battled back and won comfortably in the end. And it dominated the 2-game total score. Probably its most impressive moment was getting tonight's Final Jeopardy question correct : It was EXTREMELY vaguely worded, I was fully expecting Watson to miss it, but it nailed it spot on. Being able to parse that question and then answer it precisely represents a vast qualitative leap forward for AI and computing in general.
To watch a computer demonstrate this capability is stunning and exciting. Its a watershed moment in computer science, a major morale boost for the much maligned AI community, a bit of a "we told you so" moment for AI and futurist enthusiasts IMHO. Ok, so we didn't get HAL 9000 by 2001 AD. But as of 2011 we now have something that looks like HAL's predecessor.
Of course, just as Kurzweil and others predicted there are already skeptics attacking the accomplishment by questioning how difficult Jeopardy really is, asserting that Watson had various unfair advantages, etc. Basically the same sorts of things said after Deep Blue beat the chess champion in 1997. No surprise there.
Bobby
