Man vs. Machine

Two events yesterday brought into acute focus the man/machine debate; at least for me. The first, reported widely, was the victory by IBM supercomputer Watson over the two greatest Jeopardy champions of all times, Ken Jennings (who won 74 straight times) and Brad Rutter (who won over $3 million in prize money): Montreal Gazette. The computer was created over a six-year period for the sole purpose of answering questions (or really answers) in the particular format that jeopardy uses. And it worked -- as it essentially slaughtered the two geniuses of trivia by a whopping $77,147 to $24,000 and $21,600 respectively. Jennings added a footnote to his Final Jeopardy response in day two -- "I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords." Maybe he's not far off, as we continue to make computers with artificial intelligence that seems to either match or exceed that of humans. Why IBM would spend the money and time to create a machine focused solely on winning a trivia contest is itself a worthy question – but it just seems to be the next step in the robots that will someday probably take over our lives.

The other event was the long anticipated first leg of the Champions League tie between Arsenal and Barcelona. Pitting two of the best football teams in the world against one another, the game lived up to its billing, with Arsenal coming back from a goal down to win 2-1 in stunning fashion; beating what is clearly the best team in the world, if not of all times. How does this relate to the battle between man and machine? I believe football (aka soccer) shows the limits of the machine. On the pitch, it is the creativity and split second decision-making of the players that moves the game from the mundane to the sublime. And it is hard to see a computer ever giving us that sort of visceral experience. In fact, I have never had a transcendental experience related to technology, except maybe a film (which of course always includes human actors, human directors, human editors, human producers, etc.). The machine may be able to process information more rapidly, act more rationally, solve more complex problems and make our lives easier, but it is our interaction with other humans and our creative spirit that makes life worth living. And so the neo-Luddite in me was left a little confused by the fact I watched such sublime human accomplishment through the very technology I am now maligning.