While average "Jeopardy" contestants -- nearly all of them already among our species' best and brightest -- answer correctly 60 percent of the time (and Jennings pulls off an impressive 79 percent), Google doesn't do too badly either: 66 percent of the time the correct answer to a "Jeopardy" question can be found in the first search result on each page. Bing was but 1 percentage point behind (possibly because -- ahem -- it uses Google search results as "signals" for its ), with Ask a few points behind that.

Wikipedia, created and edited by humans? 29 percent accuracy. Ouch.

What does that mean for the rest of us? Per Jennings:

IBM ... sees a future in which fields like medical diagnosis, business analytics, and tech support are automated by question-answering software like Watson. Just as factory jobs were eliminated in the 20th century by new assembly-line robots, Brad and I were the first knowledge-industry workers put out of work by the new generation of "thinking" machines. "Quiz show contestant" may be the first job made redundant by Watson, but I'm sure it won't be the last.

IBM is already planning to roll out a cybernetic "physician's assistant" that will help with diagnoses -- think Dr. Gregory House without the sardonic humor or the valium addiction.