Watson wins Jeopardy

How far have computers come to being closer to humans?

Not far, really, it seems.

Sure.. computers are mastering some of our hobbies (Checkers, Chess ,and now Jeopardy- through the use of site statistics/future-move-metrics) but they're not clever enough yet to handle other human tasks, let alone in tandem.
They're winning at rule-based systems. They know the rules, and the rules don't change (do they?), during the game.

Brian Christian was an author featured on 8-March on the Daily show, who discussed what its like during a Turing contest (computer programs attempt to be human, humans try to both prove themselves as humans or computers, via chat/messaging interfaces)

I enjoyed hearing more on the AI topic, since IBM's "Watson" ($3M) computer, featured on NOVA, did just win on Jeopardy recently.

One possible lateral move noted for the Watson computer is akin to a Doctor's companion, for sifting through thousands of diagnosis and offering a top-ten solution list from what medical parameters/criterion are in scope. Maybe it can even work for cars, too.
But it would be very niche-oriented. Having too many "departments" to support would fracture its logic and site heuristics/ algorithms, rendering a low confidence level in its results.

I do wonder what the hypothetical future winning AI programming language might be, or if its even here/invented as of yet. (C# anyone, or pascal?)

I don't believe humans are simply digital-thinkers (0's and 1's);
I wonder if an AI may need the extra quirks of quantum computing to crack our brains' mysteries, or will "Watson"'s approach actually be the new pillar for human understanding?

For now, some may answer this with a jeopardy-style answer: "What is... wishful thinking?"

Reference Links:

http://www.thedailyshow.com/full-episodes/tue-march-8-2011-brian-christian
(@21:39)
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704504404576184613808395934.html
http://www.salon.com/books/laura_miller/2011/02/26/most_human_human
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/03/08/954178/-The-Daily-Show-Colbert-Report-Chat-thread-030811
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tech/smartest-machine-on-earth.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_%28artificial_intelligence_software%29