Friday, March 28, 2014

IBM Watson and Cognitive Computing

Almost everyone knows that IBM put their Watson computer system up against humans to win Jeopardy and made headlines.  What many do not know is that IBM in January created a new business unit at the highest levels of the company headed by a Senior Vice President (Mike Rhodin) with a huge investment dedicated the commercial implementation of Watson and Cognitive Computing.

First let me give you the link to a YouTube video of the announcement.   Let me caution you that this is a 2 hour video so allow yourself plenty of time to watch this.

The whole point of Watson is for you to interact with a computer system, process huge amounts of data, find relevant facts, issues, and opportunities that you could not have found with a mere human brain.

Examples include the medical profession where huge sums of research are analyzed in addition to patient information to come up with suggested courses of treatment along with the probabilities of success.

Retail systems that ask you what you want and find exactly what you need based on your requirements.

Travel systems that customize trips to your needs and desires.

The list goes on.

IBM has dedicated ⅓ of IBM Research to Watson and is currently working to have it learn to hear and understand what it is hearing, to see by interpreting content in still and video images, and much much more.

Click the link and watch the video.  This is an example of a major company like IBM shifting directions.  Please note that Watson is based on IBM super computers, Big Data, and Cloud computing.  IBM has promised a sandbox where everyone can interact and experience Watson.  I'll post more once I try it out.

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