Watson, I.B.M. says, will be used to help human operators, but the system can also be used in a “self-service” mode, in which customers can interact directly with the program by typing questions in a Web browser or by speaking to a speech recognition program.

That suggests a “Freakonomics” outcome: There is already evidence that call-center operations that were once outsourced to India and the Philippines have come back to the United States, not as jobs, but in the form of software running in data centers.

Robotics

A race is under way to build robots that can walk, open doors, climb ladders and generally replace humans in hazardous situations.

In December, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, the Pentagon’s advanced research arm, will hold the first of two events in a $2 million contest to build a robot that could take the place of rescue workers in hazardous environments, like the site of the damaged Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

Scheduled to be held in Miami, the contest will involve robots that compete at tasks as diverse as driving vehicles, traversing rubble fields, using power tools, throwing switches and closing valves.

In addition to the Darpa robots, a wave of intelligent machines for the workplace is coming from Rethink Robots, based in Boston, and Universal Robots, based in Copenhagen, which have begun selling lower-cost two-armed robots to act as factory helpers. Neither company’s robots have legs, or even wheels, yet. But they are the first commercially available robots that do not require cages, because they are able to watch and even feel their human co-workers, so as not to harm them.

For the home, companies are designing robots that are more sophisticated than today’s vacuum-cleaner robots. Hoaloha Robotics, founded by the former Microsoft executive Tandy Trower, recently said it planned to build robots for elder care, an idea that, if successful, might make it possible for more of the aging population to live independently.