Students vs. computer
Harvard Business School (HBS) and the MIT Sloan School of Management house some of the brightest up-and-coming minds in their fields. But on Monday, students from both schools came up against one super-brain they couldn’t best: Watson, IBM’s powerful computer. HBS welcomed its new computer overlord — which “Jeopardy!” contestant Ken Jennings famously nicknamed Watson after conceding defeat on the show — on Halloween for a lively “Jeopardy!” match-up against teams of three from Harvard and Sloan. Before a crowd of hundreds, the two teams flanked Watson, represented by an unremarkable-looking computer monitor. “We decided we were going to find the absolute best, cream-of-the-crop, top-of-the-barrel contestants we could possibly find,” said host Todd Alan Crain, so IBM turned to top universities. But outsmarting Watson, the students learned, is a not-so-elementary task. While MIT’s team finished the contest with a disappointing $100, HBS students Genevieve Sheehan ’05, Jonas Akins ’01, and Jayanth Iyengar came close...