Ava's reflection on a newstory

Moseman, Andrew. “Who's Smarter, a Human or a Computer? Round 9: Jeopardy.” Discovery Magazine. 14 April. 2011. 17 April 2011. http://discovermagazine.com/2011/jan-feb/14-who.s-smarter-human-computer-round-9-jeopardy/article_view?b_start:int=0&-C=

“Who’s smarter, a human or a computer?” What a vigilant article, published in Discovery Magazine on 14Feb, 2011. The article mainly reported on the Jeopardy competition with Ken Jennings, Brad Rutter and IBM’s Jeopardy-playing computer system, named Watson. When looking through the article, a quite interesting question raised in my mind is that -- is “Watson” a cyborg? In the last few lectures, we’ve been discussing the virtual and reality, cyborg and robot. Is Donna Haraway’s definition of cyborg unquestionable? Is the boundary of robot, cyborg blurred? In this article, I just want to take “Watson” as an example to reflect on the topic of cyborg.

Regarding the definition by Donna Haraway, cyborg is “a hybrid of machine and organism”, should it be possible to say “Watson” is an organism? Actually, when IBM’s Deep Blue, chess-playing program, won a chess game against world champion Garry Kasparov in the 1990s, both software designers of checkers, chess, Scrabble, bridge, and more are hoping to create systems that master the game. However, Jeopardy competition is not the case. Machine is needed to parse clue and analyze the category title to pick out the proper response, just like human, in Jeopardy competition. Mathematical and closed system resembling chess-playing program is unable to handle the situations.

Therefore, “Watson” was inserted a great amount of database which is “human experience” in my word. Although “Watson” is not physically “a hybrid of machine and organism”, emotionally, “Watson” is an organism because it is regarded as a supercomputer to surpass human mind. First, though he was stuffed in an ordinary metal box, do you agree “Watson” is a robot? Then, if “Watson” a robot, do you agree robot supposedly is emotionless? Hence, “Watson” is emotionless? Lastly, if an emotional robot is thinking like human, is it a cyborg? Paradoxically, scientists seem to comment on the issue by giving a human identity to this supercomputer by naming it “Watson”.

“Watson” is a very good example to reconsider the blurred boundary of robot, cyborg and human. When we consider ourselves cyborgs just because our virtual identity in cyberspace, then why can’t we consider “Watson” as a cyborg just because it has human mind and was given a human identity by scientists? In the digital age, the relationship of human and machine become correlated. The blurred identities of human and machine in a way were re-defined by the cyborg theory. Actually, is it necessary to create cyborg “Watson” to win human? Maybe it is non-sense in the 19th century, but in today’s technological dominated society, it seems as ordinary as we chat online but not by cell phone.