Ken Jennings - Watson, Jeopardy and Me

During the industrial revolution, much of the manual labor that had hitherto been done by people was suddenly taken over by machines, who were faster, more accurate, cheaper, and didn't complain about safe working conditions, fair wages, paid sick days, maternity leave, holiday pay and so on, so they replaced people, who ended up losing their jobs.

Well, that's physical labor, we laughed, and thought that machines could never replace our raw brain power: we know how to think, how to reason, how to solve problems, how to calculate and compute, etc. Well, guess what? As Watson, the powerful IBM supercomputer proved a couple of years ago, you might not want to feel so confident that you have job security just because your job requires mental power... the machines are coming, and unlike the terminator who was shooting for John and Sarah Connor, these machines are shooting for your job!

In the following TEDTalks presentation, Ken Jennings, all-star Jeopardy champion, tells the story of his experience of being the best Jeopardy player of all time and getting beaten by a computer, and reflects on what this might mean for the future of humanity.

How long until your job is taken over by a computer?