The next challenge for Watson, I.B.M.’s supercomputer that crushed the two best human “Jeopardy!” players, will be to learn to diagnose and treat patients, with help from Columbia University Medical Center and the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

That could be good news for doctors puzzling over a diagnosis and who have reams of data that need to be analyzed, Abraham Verghese, a professor at the Stanford University School of Medicine, wrote in The Times.

But it could be bad news for patients. Dr. Verghese believes that more technology does not necessarily mean better health care, and patients tend to agree. But if doctors remember their early training, he says, all would be better off. After all, a computer is unlikely to master a thorough medical exam.

The ease of ordering tests, X-rays and M.R.I.s worries Dr. Verghese because it “has caused doctors’ most basic skills in examining the body to atrophy,” he wrote. “When American medical trainees go to hospitals and clinics abroad with few resources, it can be quite humbling to see doctors in Africa and South America detect fluid around patients’ lungs not with X-rays but by percussing the chest with their fingers and listening with their stethoscopes.”

Another arena where the limitations of technology are apparent is one that technology spawned - virtual worlds where online discussions can often degenerate into nasty comments and threats. Researchers point to how empathy is deadened by a computer screen.

This creates a dangerous environment for children, who can be exposed to predators, inappropriate language and bullying when playing online games . To protect them, the best technology is no match for human eyes .

“Anybody can buy a profanity filter, but kids have all kinds of work-arounds,” Anne Collier of connectsafely.org, which promotes the well-being of children, told The Times. “There really is no substitute for human moderation.”

Another comforting thought may be that Watson’s performance in “Jeopardy!” does not mean that language processing has advanced to the point of language comprehension, Ben Zimmer wrote in The Times Magazine. The techniques Watson used “never approached any deep understanding of the semantic content in the ‘Jeopardy!’ clues,” Mr. Zimmer wrote.

“Instead, Watson crunched terabytes of data to figure out statistically likely responses to clues based in part on which words appear most often with other words .”

And the day when Watson comprehends “semantic content,” which humans use to make up stories, is not likely to arrive any time soon. How people respond to stories is ingrained in their DNA, according to Peter Guber, a Hollywood executive and author of “Tell to Win: Connect, Persuade and Triumph With the Hidden Power of Story.”

To test his hypothesis, Mr. Guber spent time in Papua New Guinea, watching tribesmen relate to one another through stories. Screens and phone lines, he told The Times, do not let you flesh out the story with body language, shared emotion and dramatic flourishes.

When he was trying to persuade a Warner Brothers executive to support “Gorillas in the Mist,” a film about the destruction of apes in Africa, M

r. Guber flopped on the floor, arms outstretched, and announced: “I’m a wounded gorilla.” The executive tried to get on with his next meeting, but Mr. Guber stayed on the floor until he got his “yes.” Mr. Guber told The Times: “To create that touch and feel you need to change somebody physiologically, psychologically ? you need to be in the room.”


TOM BRADY