What you’re about to watch here is the smallest stop-motion movie ever made. Called “A Boy and His Atom,” the one-minute clip was compiled by manipulating a few dozen carbon atoms on a copper surface.

It all started a couple of years ago when IBM's Watson, the computer voted most likely to destroy us when the technological Singularity strikes, was given access to the Urban Dictionary. In an attempt to help Watson learn slang — and thus be more amenable to conversational language — the machine subsequently picked up …

When making the film version of 2001: A Space Odyssey, Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke consulted with IBM. Given that one of the film's major plot points centers on an insane artificial intelligence, Kubrick was a tad bit worried that IBM might be displeased with their association with the film.

At the end of each year, IBM Research lists "innovations that will change our lives in the next five years." This year's "IBM 5 in 5" is particularly intriguing in that their braintrust is heralding the age of "cognitive computing" — a technological era in which computers and handheld devices can better approximate and…

You might already know this, but it's news to me. Arthur C. Clarke went to a Bell Labs demonstration in 1962 or 1963 featuring an IBM 704 singing the song "Daisy" (or, more properly, "Daisy Bell") and it made a huge impression. This was also the first real-life example of a singing computer.

Step aside, Fujitsu K — there's a new king of the mountain, and its name is Sequoia. For the first time in three years, an American-built device has taken top spot in a ranking of the 500 most powerful supercomputers. Developed by IBM, Sequoia will be used to – get ready for the letdown – carry out simulations to help …

The Yale Law Journal's Betsy Cooper wrote an essay examining our favorite Jeopardy! champion (and new medical diagnoser) robot Watson, but from a new angle: Could Watson help judges make legal decisions?

While the comparison between the computer and the human brain is one that has been made for over half a century, the way each one processes information could not be more different. Now, IBM researchers have designed a revolutionary chip that, for the first time, actually mimics the functioning of a human brain.

In the 1960s, IBM tapped Jim Henson and composer Raymond Scott to create "The Paperwork Explosion," a four-minute advertisement for the MT/ST word-processing machine. The commercial was jarring brew of jargon and flashing images seemingly custom-made for an office-drone dystopia.

So Watson just pwned humanity, setting a milestone in the history of artificial intelligence. But this trouncing gives us—as we lick our wounds, cry foul, or demand a rematch—the opportunity to ask afresh what it means to be human.