Monday night's episode of "Jeopardy !" matched Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings, the most successful contestants in the show's 27-year history, against Watson, a supercomputer with the power of a 2,800-computer network and a whopping 15 terabytes — that's 15 trillion bytes — of memory.
Rutter and Watson, named for IBM co-founder Thomas J. Watson, were tied at $5,000 by show's end. Jennings lagged with $2,000.
This was round one of a three-part face-off pitting human against computer.
"You are about to witness what may prove to be an historic competition," host Alex Trebek told viewers.
"I am a deep question-and-answering system," Watson said, introducing itself.
Watson took the lead in the first few minutes of the program, answering question after question correctly.
"Wanted for stealing bread in 'Les Miserables.' " "Who is Jean Valjean?" Watson responded with lightning quick speed.
"The decade in which the first modern crosswords were published and Oreo cookies were first produced."
"What is the 1920s?" Watson asked, repeating the incorrect response given by Jennings seconds earlier.
Proof of the fallibility of technology? Perhaps.
It was at this point in the first round, however, that the human race began to show promise as Rutter took control in the latter half of the program. Rutter won $3.25 million in his previous appearances on the show; Jennings, who won 74 consecutive games in 2004, won $2.5 million.
The stakes are high in this challenge, with a $1 million first prize, $300,000 for second place and $200,000 for third place. Contestants have agreed to donate at least half of their winnings to charity.
Episodes No. 2 and 3 of the "Jeopardy!" man vs. machine challenge will air tonight and Wednesday.
The bouts were taped at the IBM research center in Yorktown Heights, Westchester County, last month.
The hardware Watson runs on is a cluster of IBM Power 750 servers. The chips for it come from the Power 7 series built at East Fishkill.
