And God only knows what else. (Photo: flickr.com/merfam)

Did IBM learn nothing from the Urban Dictionary fiasco? The AP reports that the company is now sending Watson to college--specifically, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, where the supercomputer will be studying up on both English and mathematics.

God knows what kinds of terrible habits and filthy language he'll pick up there!

RPI gets to run Watson’s software for three years at its own supercomputing facilities. Researchers' goals include finding ways to "improve Watson's mathematical ability and help it quickly figure out the meaning of new or made-up words." A university sounds like a good place for that, all right.

"We consider it absolutely strategic technology for IBM in the future. And we want to evolve it, of course, thoughtfully, but also in collaboration with the best and brightest in academia," Michael Henesey, IBM's vice president of business development, told the AP.

That's what parents always say, until the first Christmas break when it's all, "actually my professor says" this and "but Marxist historians would argue" that.

(Photo: The Morton Report)

In order to pass the Turing Test, a computer must display both emotional and intellectual behavior that's almost indistinguishable from that of humans. IBM's most famous supercomputer, Watson, is close, but first he must emulate one of humanity's finer inventions: crazy Internet slang. YOLO!

According to Fortune, researchers at IBM attempted to indoctrinate Watson into the wonderful world of LOL and OMG, but in the process they accidentally caused the supercomputer to develop a bit of a filthy mouth. As it turned out, Watson "couldn't distinguish between polite language and profanity," and curse words lifted from Urban Dictionary and Wikipedia began sneaking into his lexicon. He even began responding to some researcher queries with the retort "Bullshit!" (Though, to be fair, it has to be so annoying to work with mere human mortals when you're a supercomputer.)

In the end, the IBM researchers had to create a filter that would stop Watson from cursing, as well as wipe his memory of all Urban Dictionary information.

If only we could do the same.

I'll take famous physicians for $1000 please

Beating the pants of humans in Jeopardy apparently wasn't enough of  challenge for IBM's natural language super-computer, Watson.

Like all good doctors, Watson lives in the suburbs of Yorktown Heights a short train ride above Manhattan, where it is consuming Medline, Pubmed and just about every textbook it can get its hands on.

“It’s all the information you’d need to be as good as the smartest second year med student,” Dr. Eliot Siegel, IBM's partner on the project, told Forbes.

So far Watson has only been tasked with answering the puzzle questions from the New England Journal of Medicine. But soon the folks at IBM will start loading him up with patient data so that Watson can take a crack at diagnosis.