Humans vs. Robots

Since technology gets more and more advanced, some humans apparently find it funny to try and program a machine with the potential to destroy us all. It all started with a chess computer beating the human chess master. That was round 1 for the robots.
Round 2 was a Go Robot, which also beat his human opponent, as far as I know (I couldn't really find a credible source, except for a mention in a Kotaku article).

But now, it's getting even more frightening. I've already read about it a while ago: IBM was building a super-computer with the beautiful name "Watson", dedicated to beating us puny humans at Jeopardy. And on Monday, ironically on Valentine's Day, the battle started. A special episode of Jeopardy aired, in which Watson was paired against two human all-time champions. And he won (although he answered wrong on the final question).

The frightening thing about Watson is that he is capable of understanding human speech. While the question is being read, he processes it and finds an answer in approximately three seconds (although he is able to answer faster than that). Apparently though, he has a built in random delay before he activates the buzzer to answer. And that, so reports say, is the key to beating him. Humans just need to buzzer faster and THEN think of an answer, although that is kind of risky, since there's a penalty for buzzering too fast.

Tonight there will be a rematch, possibly the last chance to save our human dignity. I'm just asking myself, what's next? The apocalypse is near, my friends, and I have a strong feeling that it won't be natural desasters or the Coming of Christ or Aliens. Someday, it will be the robots that will destroy us all.

Oh, also there's (I quote) "terrifying video footage" of the latest Humans vs. Robots battle. And it truly IS terrifying. Watch at your own risk.

UPDATE: My bad, the battle is already over and, once again, humanity has lost.

Wikipedia quote:

In a two-game, combined-point match aired in three Jeopardy! episodes running from February 14–16, Watson bested Brad Rutter, the biggest all-time money winner on Jeopardy!, and Ken Jennings, the record holder for the longest championship streak. Watson received first prize of $1 million, while Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter received $300,000 and $200,000, respectively.