"The 'Jeopardy!' Buzzer Is a Cruel Mistress"

"If the computer wins—and in test matches that IBM has held, Watson has been dominating the humans—it will inspire comparisons to Deep Blue, the Chess computer that shocked the world and prompted existential hand-wringing about the nature of human consciousness by beating Garry Kasparov in 1997.
"But here’s the rub: 'Jeopardy!' is actually a terrible way of proving that Watson is more intelligent than its opponents."

Ezra Deutsch-Feldman at The New Republic casts doubt on this week's men-versus-machine showdown.