Synopsis

Enhancing human intellect proves a far greater challenge than commonly imagined, and the vision of a figure like HAL from *2001: A Space Odyssey* remains firmly in the realm of fantasy. Yet, researchers are making progress with systems such as "Watson," an IBM computer poised to undertake a pioneering endeavor: competing against human opponents on the game show *Jeopardy!* Equipped with a memory comparable to 2,400 home computers and a database of roughly ten million documents, will Watson be ab