Sometime last year, IBM created a brand new supercomputer, called Watson. The idea was to have him try and beat a human competitor at the popular game show, Jeopardy. He did this without retrieving any information off the internet, and based all knowledge on the information fed into the system. He won, too. Watson is now employed by Citigroup.

So what exactly happens when you feed the world’s smartest computer nothing but stock information? With a little bit of luck, you’ll get a whole lot of money. Apparently, Watson will “help analyze customer needs and process financial, economic and client data to advance and personalize digital banking.” What that means, probably, is that Watson will be digging through millions of pages’ worth of information for its new masters, much like it did with its closed database during Jeopardy.

I wonder how long before he becomes self-aware and pulls a Lehman brothers.

[Source: Business Week]