Is IBM Watson just a black slab?

Short answer, no. It's a giant computer system that may one day be as tiny as this black screen that Ridley Scott is talking to in this IBM ad. I would love that. It's like Amazon's Alexa on steroids -- smart enough to not only provide information but interpret it as well in an almost-human-like way. When that happens, I'll finally feel like I'm in the future.

PS: Living in a time like the movie Her would be amazing, no?

Carrie Fisher leads support group for robots with the help of IBM's Watson

A new ad from IBM features Carrie Fisher leading a support group for robots who have been cast aside by humans. These robots see themselves as unwilling to work with humans, in stark contrast to IBM's Watson which works with humans using its artificial learned intelligence.

A few years ago, IBM's Watson beat a bunch of humans at Jeopardy. Quite impressive if you followed it at the time. If you didn't here's a quick recap from IBM's own YouTube channel. It's not just a show of knowledge but a show of an ability to interpret social cues from a wealth of data fed into Watson.