Rage Against the Machine

Chris Jones (Esquire): Ken Jennings — the legendary contestant who won seventy-four consecutive games of Jeopardy! in 2004 — is sitting on a bench in Seattle, watching his kids play at the park. He's also running down the reasons why Watson, the IBM artificial-intelligence machine that will one day kill us all, should beat him at the game he once owned.

Funnily enough, they're a lot of the same reasons why Jennings was so good at it. IBM's engineers first began toying with the idea of creating a Jeopardy! supercontestant while they watched Jennings on his run. Like the Watson of their dreams, Jennings seemed purpose-built to win the game.

In a lot of ways, he was.

-eddie