IBM scientists have been developing a supercomputer called “Watson” that they expect will be the world’s most advanced “question answering” machine, able to understand a question posed in everyday natural language by accessing information in tens of millions of documents.

The producers of “Jeopardy!” have now agreed to pit Watson against some of the game’s best former players as early as this fall as a test of Watson’s capabilities against actual humans.

IBM also plans to begin selling versions of Watson to companies in the next year or two to help decision-makers sift through enormous piles of written material in seconds.