"Beyond our excitement for the match itself, our team is very motivated by the possibilities that Watson's breakthrough computing capabilities hold for building a smarter planet and helping people in their business tasks and ," he added.

Programmers and scientists working on the Watson project pushed for the Jeopardy challenge because the game show provides what they feel is "the ultimate challenge." The show's clues involve analyzing subtle meaning, irony, riddles, and other complexities in which many humans excel and computers do not.

To get ready for the final matches, the supercomputer last fall played more than 50 practice games against former Jeopardy champions. IBM also reported that Watson had to take and pass the same test that human contestants have to take to qualify as a contestant.

IBM has said that the developers of the supercomputer aren't focused mostly on winning a game show.

In fact, they are looking at creating technology that can be applied in a variety of important applications, such as diagnosing the ills of medical patients. Officials said that the technology could be used to improve online self-service help desks, provide tourists with travel information and improve telephone customer support services.