Although we speak of the singularity as a science fiction idea or as a possibility for the future, the emergence of strong AI can already be seen today. IBM has been known to be on the forefront of the development of AI. In the 1980s and 1990s, IBM developed a chess playing computer that was able to defeat one of the greatest chess grandmasters ever, Gary Kasparov. However, IBM’s truly great breakthrough in artificial intelligence technology came with Watson. Watson was designed to be a computer that could defeat humans in a game of Jeopardy. Although it may not seem at first like a sophisticated capability to be able to play Jeopardy, those who have seen the show can appreciate the difficulties involved with understanding the wordplay, the puns, and the syntax. Watson is able to understand how these questions are asked and is able to search for the appropriate answer to these questions. When facing two of the greatest Jeopardy players of all time, Watson won with ease. What makes Watson really special and different from other computers is that it can learn. It can improve and in doing so can do more than it was originally programmed to do. Watson can also understand. Unlike other machines or like the man in the Chinese Room, Watson is able to understand the information it is given. The fact that Watson has these abilities suggests that the singularity may be closer than we think.
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