Nice try, Watson. Yeah, I’m talking to you, and I know you can understand me, Mr. “I’m IBM’s Supercomputer and I went on Jeopardy! and beat two humans so now I think I know everything about being a real live, sentient being, including an in-depth understanding of condiments,” blah blah blah. Stay away from barbecue sauce. Got that? It’s obvious what you’re doing here and I won’t stand for it.

By obvious, clearly I mean the fact that Watson has gone and created a barbecue sauce designed to appeal to exactly what humans would like means he’s trying to kickstart the robot revolution. Not content with palling around with Alex Trebek, not this one — Watson is moving on toward world domination with this stuff, mark my words.

The sauce in question is a special Fourth of July edition — another clever trick appealing to our patriotism! — called Bengali Butternut BBQ sauce, reports NPR’s The Salt blog. The idea behind IBM’s cognitive kitchen is to get the computers to basically like humans, and humans like to think about and then eat barbecue sauce on stuff.

“Cognitive computers from IBM Research modeled quintillions of recipes based on thousands of ingredient combinations to predict what new tastes people would find surprising and delicious. And voilà!” IBM says of Watson’s newfound love of the kitchen.

It’s a blend of a dozen ingredients like butternut squash, white wine, dates, Thai chilies and tamarind, and according to IBM, “it’s got a slow, warm heat and a kick.”

I’ll bet it’s got a kick — the kick in our backsides when we’re down and Watson is lording over us in the new robot-controlled regime.

Anyway, Watson’s sauce is only a limited run of bottles, but humans can recreate his work with the recipe on IBM’s site. Just don’t let it fool you into a sense of camaraderie with those things. Watson’s got an ulterior motive and it’s only a matter of time before he starts thinking he can woo us with a friendly game of catch in the yard.

IBM’s Watson Is Out With Its Own Barbecue Sauce [The Salt]
“Pass the computerized condiment, please.” [IBM]

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