Today, Jeopardy. Tomorrow…

A supercomputer is going to compete on the smart person’s game show:

Pretty soon, “Jeopardy!” host Alex Trebek may face his toughest contestant yet: an IBM supercomputer.

On Monday, the tech giant plans to announce that it’ll be moving one of its Blue Gene machines to Los Angeles to appear on the popular game show, according to a report by the New York Times.

Researchers think this will be a whole new challenge for computers, because of Jeopardy’s “ask the answer” format, and because the clues are sometimes vague or obscure.

Computers have played, and sometimes beaten, humans at chess, but “Jeopardy!” requires a whole new skill level — the ability to think like a human, or at least understand how a human would think.

“The big goal is to get computers to be able to converse in human terms,” one IBM researcher told the Times. “And we’re not there yet.”

The computer will not, the story says, be able to connect to the internet during the game. As if it couldn’t just download everything ahead of time.

I want to go on record saying this is a really bad idea. First chess, now Jeopardy. Tomorrow, global thermonuclear war, and then we’ll just have to wait around for Christian Bale to send his father back in time to protect the klutzy waitress from the killer robots.

Speaking of Christian Bale, did I ever tell you about the time I helped him tie his tie? It was during the filming of Public Enemies – they shot part of that in the Wisconsin State Capitol, where I work. I walked into the men’s room, and there he was, with two female assistants. They couldn’t get his tie on right.

I wear ties. I offered aid. They accepted. I stood behind Bale and tied his tie for him (it was challenging, lemme tell you, since it was one of those 1920-style ties).

Then he mentioned how he’d kill for a cup of coffee, and I invited him back to my office. I always have coffee. Nice guy, Bale, if a little hot-tempered.

(Editor’s note: there may be a few slight exaggerations in the above story.)