Photo courtesy IBM
So instead of ending up with a malfunctioning killer AI army that tech mavens are horrified about, IBM is betting research money on making its most recent well-known supercomputer, Watson, a fantasy sports manager. You know, the "Jeopardy!" winner, the one that's also going to be a sleuthy doctor's assistant soon.IBM announced in a statement today that it's partnering up Watson's ecosystem with Edge Up Sports to help fantasy football coaches optimize their teams."Successful fantasy owners dedicate several hours per week strategizing for fantasy football. Still, with so much information available, it's difficult to stay current on the latest news and information surrounding players," the statement read.And it looks like Watson is going to trawl through a lot of real-time updates and tweets to advise fantasy football coaches how they'd like to up their game.Everything that Watson's doing pulls from massive piles of data. Machine learning, as it's called, allows computers to sharpen into a certain form of artificial intelligence after given thousands of thousands of data points. It's been used to get machines to process feelings, find out how to beat video game levels, and even write you some convincing handwritten notes.For this partnership, the supercomputer will collate fantasy sports articles, analyst writeups, player injury history, projections into a computerized slurry that IBM says will yield some A+ virtual sports advice. It's natural after all: IBM's processed media sentiments in real sporting events before, so why not extend that to virtual ones?