A Post Jeopardy! Human Ego Boost: Symphony of Science Celebrates with an "Ode to the Brain"—OURS!

Watson's victory over two former Jeopardy! champions was so decisive and lopsided--a shock and awe moment--that you had to empathize with the losers' chagrin. It was the culmination of a four year, 30 million dollar, Manhattan Project blitz that transformed natural-language processing software from a blithering idiot savant into a glib, fast-food, renaissance man. For Watson, the size of ten refrigerators, powered by 2,880 processor cores, and operating at 80 teraflops, Jeopardy! was just the beginning. The software and servers are central to IBM's new Smart Cities Business Strategy: running city grids, infrastructure, water and power utilities; data mining electronic hospital records, legal documents and more. For man, possessing a mere three pound brain, this was complicated--another petit mal, Copernican shudder. To help relieve anyone's innovator's remorse (symptoms: extreme lethargy, nail-biting and an irrational urge to live off the grid), John Boswell, who produces Symphony of Science, created an auto-tuned celebration of the human brain: the miraculous organ that imagined and created Watson, while still remaining susceptible to new-technology anxiety disorder.

Pokerbots fleece unwitting online card players

Ok, now that you've had your moment of self-congratulation, the unsettling news. Computers--obviously smarter than you think--are now taking over games once thought to require human intuition, cunning and most importantly, the ability to bluff. According to the New York Times: Recently, Bryan Taylor, a professional online poker player, suspected that he was competing against computers programmed to take unsuspecting players to the cleaners. (Click to see Mr. Taylor's profile and winnings--there's no picture ID. Is he just embarrassed, losing to a pokerbot, or is he hiding from a Texas Hold'em, retaliation? Remember, "What happens online, stays online." And, if you're paranoid, even several Prozacs short of Philip K. Dick, it's easy to imagine a winning hand fronting a Joe Pesci world-view and a grudge.) Mr. Taylor's site, PokersStars, investigated and:

...determined that his opponents had been computers masquerading autoplay:0]as people and shut them down. In October, another large poker site, Full Tilt, informed customers that it had taken action to limit the proliferation of bots, including freezing some accounts. Last year, after it was tipped off by Mr. Taylor, the company found 10 bots and returned more than $57,000 to players who had lost money to them.

The first, simple pokerbots were created by hobbyists, but the newer, more facile poker-playing programs, often created by college researchers, have grown increasingly human-like in sophistication:

... Buyers can program their bots to use different decision-making strategies in various circumstances, and then observe which outcomes are more successful when applied in real-world games.

The silver lining to Mr. Taylor's story: While many less savvy human players have been knocked out of the game, penniless and clueless... "his cleverness in spotting bots won him a job. He now works full time for PokerStars." A modern-day Wyatt Earp, tracking platinum-card slinging pokerbots in the online wild west. Mr. Taylor will have a happy career in online poker enforcement, at least until his bot-visor says, "Sorry, Bryan, but it takes a bot to think like a bot." Then, he'll quickly be pink-slipped. But like any American with a dream and can-do attitude, a little chutzpah, and a revenge fantasy, he'll start programing his own pokerbots. In the future, online poker will strictly be a bot-on-bot, human spectator sport. Eventually, physical sports like baseball will become the last refuge for human players-- manager-bots telling the sports media," Sure he can play the game, but does he know the game?" Wink, wink.

Robot comedy: Hollywood writers have stopped laughing

Professional comics in Hollywood and New York are getting flop sweat. Consider it a collective Rodney Dangerfield moment. Many stood nervously in the back of a packed TEDtalks audience and watched the future of show business work the stage. A short and glib entertainment robot (no, not Ryan Seacrest) got off several solid jokes, had the audience laughing for most of the brief act, and even has its own agent, creator Heather Knight, founder of MarilynMonrobot Labs.

When the show was over and the applause had died down, one comedy writer threw his Android smartphone, and stalked out of the theater slowly enough to be overheard," What's this-- Alf with a microchip? I can't write jokes for a animatronic lawn jockey-- What a Shecky-bot." A former observational comic, now working as a local news meterologist, conceded,"Ok, sure, he's funnier than Dane Cook, but that's setting the bar pretty low." Jerry Seinfeld, also leaving the auditorium, observed," A robot comic, what's up with that?" Click here to see the demonstration. Ms. Knight now says that she's already handling several job offers. Nothing definite yet, but her comic-bot might be doing Steven Spielberg's son's Bar Mitzvah this summer.

Later this fall, he'll probably do the View, and then headline a Barack Obama fund-raiser for Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar. Sesame Street keeps calling, but the diminutive comic doesn't want to be typecast as a novelty act. His dream is to do cruise ship comedy on Virgin Galactic. "He's family friendly and would love to work a weightless sub-orbital room," said Ms. Knight. "Richard Branson is a big fan, and space is the perfect venue for a clean comic who refuses to do insult comedy." By the time you've read this, Shecky-bot will probably have its own sit-com. CBS execu-bots, who've said they're "thinking way outside the box" have been reworking Two and a Half Men to air without Charlie Sheen.

The new show will be called, 2.5 Robots. It was a quick and easy rewrite. Toss out the bickering brothers. Bring in that comedy staple, a robotic odd couple-- one's prissy and the other's an average Joe with attitude-- enter Shecky. Comedy gold. "Oww...hey, I just melted my titianium-tipped fingers. Who left my recharger in the bathtub?" The original kid can stay. He's already got a robotic, passive-aggressive, teen monotone, but sorry, Charlie, the Shecky-bot doesn't do blow or hookers; won't need a 12 Step program; and works for scale. Tiger blood?--he's already highly amped.

There have been a lot of robots in the news lately-- which are your favorites?

Photo: Charlie Sheen- Angela George Wikicommons Photo: Virgin Galatic spacecraft-- Virgin Galactic Website Photos: Jeopardy!- IBM Promo screngrab Photos: Robot comic and audience-- TEDtalks screen shot