Artificial Intelligence Update

As we all know now, the IBM computer Watson beat the world's best human Jeopardy players handily, winning three times as much money as they did. Its success is due to an amazing amalgam of different tools all working cohesively (not unlike the human brain):

http://www.pcworld.com/article/220056/watson_beats_jeopardys_best_whats_next.html

Add a few "humanizing" algorithms into the mix, add voice recognition, face recognition and emotion recognition (all of which already exist), and you'll have a computer not much different than the artificially intelligent computers found in a lot of science fiction. Wait a few years for the hardware to shrink to desktop size and for robotics technology to improve a bit more, and the robots of science fiction will be a reality.