Humans vs. Robots

 When asked, "Do you find it odd that teaching a computer chess is easier than teaching it Jeopardy?" I contemplated this for about a minute and realized that I do not find this odd at all. I agree with the statement that teaching a computer/robot chess is easier than teaching it Jeopardy. When I was younger, I played chess at a pretty competitive level. I learned it was very much like a mathematical equation. Chess is based a lot on probability and statistics; the key to the game is to predict the next move of the opponent. Chess is also a reaction-game - when a specific move is made, there are a limited amount of choices you can make to react to that move. Therefore, a computer would have an easier time computing the probabilities involved in the game. On the other hand, Jeopardy involves much more depth in knowledge - it requires a vast amount of cultural, political, and social knowledge as well. And because of this, it is much harder to program/teach a robot the skills needed to win Jeopardy. 

In terms of the difference between humans and robots, I think there is a huge difference still. We talked about the robot not having certain "emotions" of which we feel. Also, I read an article a couple months ago about the first restaurant, located in Singapore,  to use Robotic waiters. It noted that this is a new revolution between the interactions of humans and robots; however, the robots are handicapped (compared to us) such that they cannot perform certain tasks like we can. With this in mind, I still think that the age of robots has indeed come a long way, but it still has a ways to go.