Having watched a mind-numbing amount of football today I’ve been subjected countless times to the idiotic commercials produced by IBM about having their Watson computer compete on Jeopardy.
In one they wax rapturously about Watson being able to decipher the Groucho Marx quip about an elephant sleeping in his pajamas. That is of course a classic example of an unclear antecedent. Puzzling out an unclear antecedent is a worthy challenge. But the Jeopardy question is, “‘Groucho quipped, one morning I shot’ this ‘in my pajamas.” That’s not a difficult question to answer, it has nothing to do with understanding language or unclear antecedents. It’s a simple lookup of Groucho Marx quotes for which any halfway bright computer science student could write a program that could be run on the brain dead Windows[1] [2] box you’re reading this post on.
That’s not the worst of it. On another commercial when the announcer (“I’m an I.B.M’er”, perhaps the most unsavory corporate branding since the iPad. Please, don’t make me explain either one.) pronounces with gravity, “…hopefully, when people see Watson compete on Jeopardy…” it only makes me think, “I hope Watson can explain to you the correct use of ‘hopefully’.”
[1]Are you reading this on an Apple box? Sorry, I didn’t mean to imply the only OS in the world was Microsoft. Please accept my apologies and go back to reading about how Steve Jobs is a creative genius.
[2]Are you reading this on a Linux box? Why? You’re way too smart to be reading this tripe. Go back to writing man pages.
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