LESSON 5 IDOLS WE NEVER KNEW WE HAD— TECHNOLOGY In 2011, IBM supercomputer “Watson” competed on Jeopardy. Watson was considered to possess the most sophisticated language recognition technology on the planet. This was all part of a three-day challenge between Watson and the two most successful contestants in Jeopardy history: Ken Jennings, who had the famous 74-game winning streak back in 2004, and Brad Rutter, who has the highest dollar earnings in Jeopardy history at over $3.5 million. The game was advertised as the ultimate man versus machine battle. Watson was dominant. After processing the clues from Alex Trebek, Watson buzzed in to answer at a speed correlating to his degree of confidence in a correct answer. The scientists sitting in the audience who had been developing Watson for the past seven years beamed with an almost parental pride. And Ken Jennings looked helpless, appearing to want nothing more than to spill coffee on Watson’s motherboard. Watson did experience some embarrassing foibles, however. For instance, in one final Jeopardy round, the question asked for a US city in which the largest and second largest airports were named after a World War II hero and a World War II battle, respectively. Both Jennings and Rutter easily got the answer: Chicago. Watson, on the other hand, came up with the great American city of . . . Toronto. Apparently, Watson struggled with certain pieces of information, like the fact that Toronto has a professional baseball team in the American League. Advanced technology, language recognition, and an almost embarrassing level of pride— these sound biblically familiar.
Genesis 11:1-9 11 The whole earth had one language and a single vocabulary. 2As people traveled in the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar, and they settled there. 3They said to one another, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used mud brick instead of stone for building material, and they used tar for mortar. 4They said, “Come, let’s build a city for ourselves and a tower whose top reaches to the sky, and let’s make a name for ourselves, so that we will not be scattered abroad over the face of the whole earth.” 5The Lord came down to see the city and the tower that the people were building. 6The
Lord said, “If this is the first thing they are doing as one people, who all have one language, then nothing that they intend to do will be too difficult for them. 7Come, let’s go down there and confuse their language, so that they cannot understand one another’s speech.” © 2016 Northwestern Publishing House. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
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