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What separates IBM Watson from humans? In a word, intuition.

Although the match between the IBM supercomputer Watson and its Jeopardy debut has already been taped, we are still a few days away from the official viewing.  As we get closer to the February 14th broadcast, I find myself wondering what I thought I already knew: "Will Watson win?"

Chances are, it will. As computers go, Watson is packed with processing power, multithreaded algorithms, and the wherewithal to go beyond normal human endurance.  (Hey, it's tough for human beings to stay fresh and focused in a high-stakes trivia contest.) But even with this in mind, I am starting to doubt.

In the latest video from Lotusphere, demonstrating Watson's prowess, I noticed a bit more caution in the judgments that Watson made: several times, the onscreen confidence bars did not surpass the threshold at which Watson is able to derive an answer and it looked like humanity had a chance to catch up.

Much has been stated in the news about how a future version of Watson could eventually replace employees at a call center or take the role of experts in day-to-day informational tasks. This is a pretty big stretch and it's important to reiterate that Watson's job is to aid mankind, not replace it.

Watson will never be equivalent to a human being and may lose the Jeopardy match for one simple reason: intuition.

In making decisions, people do not calculate at a numeric level the way that Watson does. Rather, much of what we decide is based on our gut feeling stemming from the environment around us, our previous situational knowledge, and an emotional state we interpret almost immediately. Rather than choosing based on logical results, we sometimes go with hunches.

An an example, if I give you three seconds to tell me you which country is more populous: Greece or Togo, you are more likely to say Greece simply because you may never have heard of Togo. And in this case, you would be right.

This ability to intuit based on our experience can, of course, trip us up. If I now ask you which city is further north, New York City or Rome, you may start visualizing the world map in your head. Not knowing the actual latitude and longitude of the locations can throw you off and you might believe the answer to be New York City (the answer is actually Rome).

Based on our ability to come to snap judgments, the human challenger still has a distinct advantage over Watson which must search its databanks for the answers to even the easier questions.  Questions in the Lotusphere video like "$1 billion was stolen from this city's central bank March 18, 2003, shortly before U.S. bombing began," brings up an immediate memory response that is faster than the supercomputer.

It is the human quality of intuition – our gut reaction – that differentiates us from Watson. It is also what will keep spurring us on to create even more viable technology intended to do more than just challenge us on game shows.

For more on Watson, follow @IBMWatson and http://www.ibmwatson.com. Also read Jarrett's previous thoughts on Watson & Our Future.