Pasadena, Calif. • Watson is the biggest contestant — the size of 10 refrigerators — ever to compete on "Jeopardy!"

He, of course, is an it: a computer. And the computer will take on the biggest winners in "Jeopardy!" history — 74-time champ Ken Jennings and biggest money-winner Brad Rutter — in a pair of games over three episodes.

But before those episodes air, PBS' "Nova" gives us a look at the origins of this supercomputer that's attempting to go where no computer has gone before. Except, of course, in fiction.

"Wouldn't it be great to be able to communicate with the computer like Captain Picard or Captain Kirk do on 'Star Trek'?" said David Ferrucci, the leader of the semantic analysis and integration department at IBM's T.J. Watson Research Center. "That's the motivating vision, and whether it loses or not in this big game is really not the point."

"Nova" gives viewers a close-up look at Watson, which is essentially 10 refrigerators' worth of hardware. "There's about a million lines of new code in there," Ferrucci said.

The appearance on "Jeopardy!" is part training, part publicity stunt.

"We looked at 'Jeopardy!' as a challenge that drives the technology, not as an end goal," said Luis von Ahn, professor of computer science at Carnegie Mellon University.

Watson, named in honor of former IBM president Thomas J. Watson Sr., has a learning curve and has participated in lots of practice rounds for the game show.

It doesn't always answer correctly. And some of its incorrect answers have been, well, amusing. "One of my favorites is we asked it what do grasshoppers eat and the answer was, 'Kosher,' " Ferrucci said.

Yet don't underestimate the machine, as Watson represents a major advance in how computers work and, yes, think.

"Jeopardy!" executive producer Harry Friedman said he became convinced of Watson's possibilities when he attended a practice session and saw it answer a question about the "candy bar that later became a Supreme Court justice. 'Who is Baby Ruth Bader Ginsburg.'

"You've got to know at least two pieces of information and put them together very, very quickly in order to come up with that correct response."

Watson's creators certainly hope so. "There's a lot of implications, not just for [artificial intelligence] and computer science, but also for the world," said von Ahn. "Everybody's using Google right now — you type in some keywords and it gives you links. But imagine if it could start answering your questions as opposed to you having to go and find the answer."

And Watson's abilities have practical applications. "We've already started looking at applying this technology to a number of different areas, including medicine and health care, as well as tech support, publishing, finance," Ferrucci said. "We're actually very excited about some of the preliminary results."

All this could seem like the first steps on a path toward what we've seen in science fiction. Like maybe the self-aware, murderous computer HAL in "2001: A Space Odyssey." Or the genocidal Cylons in "Battlestar Galactica." Or Skynet in "Terminator."

"We don't have to worry about HAL just yet," said von Ahn. "Maybe in a hundred years or so, but that's OK. We'll be dead."

spierce@sltrib.com —

Nova on 'Jeopardy'

The "Nova" special "Smartest Machine on Earth" airs Wednesday, Feb. 9, at 9 p.m. on KUED-Ch. 7. Watson the supercomputer competes on "Jeopardy!" on Monday, Feb. 14 through Wednesday, Feb. 16, at 7:30 p.m. on KJZZ-Ch. 14.