Technology giant International Business Machines' (IBM) supercomputer "Watson" on Thursday defeated the top two all-time champions of the popular quiz show Jeopardy in a practice round, triggering debate if artificial intelligence is greater than the human intelligence.

Watson's victory brought a great sigh of relief for IBM researchers, who have been making hard efforts to create computers that can efficiently imitate human intelligence.

Supercomputer Watson has been named after legendary IBM President Thomas Watson. IBM is trying to demonstrate its computing expertise through Watson's unique abilities.

The company said Watson's ability to comprehend language made it far more evolved than supercomputer Deep Blue, which won against world chess champ Garry Kasparov in the year of 1997.

According to IBM Research director John Kelly, Watson is able to comprehend natural human language, which is not an easy thing for a machine to do.

Speaking on the topic, Kelly said, "What Watson does and has demonstrated is the ability to advance the field of artificial intelligence by miles."

The real man vs. machine Jeopardy contest will be aired from February 14 to February 16.