The other way to handle this would’ve been to tell him “ok - we’ll leave the old system in place, but since you’re idle 40 out 60 minutes per hour, we’re going to reduce your pay to $9 / hr... your choice”. ;-).

The new 2017 U.S. tax law actually encourages automation by allowing companies to write down their cost immediately rather than amortizing over the lifespan of the equipment.

You nailed it - exactly.

Assuming you believe Watson’s creators, it is impressive, isn’t it? The fact that Watson would only buzz in if it’s computed confidence was higher than a certain factor, otherwise it would suffer the same 250ms ‘lockout’ as human players do, is really interesting. So there’s a lot of computation going on there as to…

It would be instructive to read this article regarding ‘buzzer factor’ re: Watson and Jeopardy. You might come to a different conclusion. It breaks it all down in detail: http://www.kurzweilai.net/the-buzzer-factor-did-watson-have-an-unfair-advantage