I am standing on a stage, behind a waist-high podium with my first name on it. To my right is a woman named Vicki; she’s behind an identical podium with her name on it. Between us is a third podium with no one behind it, just the name “Watson” on the front. We are about to play Jeopardy!
This is the National Retail Federation’s mammoth annual conference at New York City’s Javits Center, and in addition to doing some onstage moderating, I have insanely agreed to compete against IBM’s (IBM) Watson, the cognitive computing system, whose power the company wants to demonstrate to the retailers. Watson’s defeat of Jeopardy!’s two greatest champions is almost a year old, so I’m not expecting this to go well. But I’m not prepared for what hits me.
