> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.cyberpunksurvivalguide.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# building a better search engine, trivia edition
- URL: https://www.cyberpunksurvivalguide.com/p/building-a-better-search-engine-trivia-edition/
- Published: 2010-06-19T08:40:17.000Z
- Updated: 2026-04-29T09:48:06.000Z
- Description: IBM has big plans for its Watson engine. Question is whether it will live up to the hype.
- Author: Greg Fish
- Tags: tech, #neutronfish, computer science, search engines, supercomputer, #Migrated-1775679248896, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-04-08 13:15

IBM doesn't shy away from making big claims, especially in the field of artificial intelligence. Last year, the cat brain simulation by their Blue Matter team made a minor splash on tech blogs, until a few people took a look at the details of the experiment and almost coughed up a hairball [when they saw that the team built a digital equivalent of cat brain soup](https://www.cyberpunksurvivalguide.com/p/ok-so-maybe-its-not-exactly-the-cats-meow/) instead of running a genuine biological simulation. This time, IBM's next big PR effort seems to be far less pretentious and a lot more impressive. It's name is Watson, and it's a very effective search engine that can interpret natural human speech and come up with a single correct result in the context of a trivia game, specifically, Jeopardy. And in preparation for Wilson's possible appearance on the show, the researchers put out a video documenting the machine's ups as well as its occasional disappointing downs…

I wonder what Wolfram thinks of this, especially as he's [trying to compute much of the known universe with an experimental Mathematica/Alpha hybrid](https://www.cyberpunksurvivalguide.com/p/computing-the-universe-one-model-at-a-time/). Watson seems to be able to track down information based on a natural language query and come up with one good answer, something today's search engines have trouble doing. Technically speaking, if you have a machine that can accurately interpret a human language to answer a question quickly and succinctly, you could push it to keep going and track down additional references for an extensive search which should take a lot less time than using Google. But then again, it's very possible that a lot of people probably wouldn't trust a machine, no matter how advanced, to have the right answer all the time and want to see its internal search results to confirm that they're getting the right facts and figures.