The TV quiz show Jeopardy this week will feature an IBM Computer ("Watson") competing against the two winningest Jeopardy champions. My prediction is that the computer is going to win. I base that on the name of the machine -- not Blue J but "Watson." That's the name of IBM's founder and I don't think they'd put their corporate identity on the line if they didn't have the breakthrough technology -- technologies -- to pull it off.
I've been reading about the technology for awhile. Apparently, it's powered by (or at least was originally powered by) the UIMA framework, which is now an Apache project.