The IBM supercomputer that trounced two human champions in the quiz show Jeopardy! this year raised the spectre of computers outwitting humans in some fields. But that day might still be very far away, one of the computer's key developers told a Hong Kong audience last week.
Scott Spangler, IBM's master inventor of the supercomputer Watson, also discussed wider uses of the technology in future at the University of Hong Kong.
His lecture - 'DeepQA: The Technology Behind Watson' - drew an overflow audience that filled Wang Gungwu Lecture Hall and spilled onto nearby stairways.
It attracted computer science majors and others intrigued by a technology that 'could one day control humankind', as a fearful arts major expressed it.
One professor even asked half-jokingly: 'Can we still keep our jobs?' To that question Spangler, a senior technical staff member and master inventor at IBM's Almaden Research Centre, answered: 'Absolutely.'
'The experts who played this game said if it had been a written test instead of a game show test, they would have beaten the computer. They felt confident that they knew the answer more often than Watson did, but Watson was faster. It was only because of how the game was set up that they were beaten.