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Fearfully and Wonderfully Made
Probably you have heard of—if not seen—the ongoing Jeopardy contest in which man once again faces a machine, this time an IBM computer named Watson. Much is being said about the match and its implications. But I was struck with something that I read in the computer trade press today:
Operating on a single CPU, it could take Watson 2 hours to answer a single question. A typical "Jeopardy" contestant can accomplish this feat in less than 3 seconds. For Watson to rival the speed of its human competitors in delivering a single, precise answer to a question requires custom algorithms, terabytes of storage and thousands of Power7 computing cores working in a massively parallel system. (eWeek)
Massive it is! The photographs of Watson are striking. All to match the power of a single human brain.
When I read this, a verse of Scripture came immediately to mind. Addressing the Lord, David writes
Let's chew on that.