Who doesn’t remember IBM’s super computer Watson after it played on Jeopardy against humans.  Naturally Watson won, but who doubted that would be the outcome.

However, a recent addition to Watson might leave many wondering what researchers thought the outcome would be when The Urban Dictionary was downloaded to it.  The outcome was predictably that Watson added the Urban Dictionary to its vocabulary, with inappropriate, and whether the researchers admit it or not hilarious, results.

According to Michael Lev-Ram in a January issue of Fortune Magazine:

“Watson couldn’t distinguish between polite language and profanity — which the Urban Dictionary is full of. Watson picked up some bad habits from reading Wikipedia as well. In tests it even used the word “bullshit” in an answer to a researcher’s query.

Ultimately, Brown’s 35-person team developed a filter to keep Watson from swearing and scraped the Urban Dictionary from its memory.”

The rest of us can now be left musing at what it must have been like the moment Watson’s reply included “bullshit”.  Gales of laughter I’m sure.