IBM's Watson

[Aranor]

...Didn't skynet start out this way?

IBM unveiled a breakthrough research project that holds the potential to infuse business and societal systems with unprecedented levels of intelligence: a new computing system, code-named Watson, that will compete with people at the game of Jeopardy!

Human vs. machine

Produced by Sony Pictures Television and distributed by CBS Television Distribution, Jeopardy! is a game demanding knowledge and quick recall, covering a broad range of topics, such as history, literature, politics, film, pop culture, and science. It poses a grand challenge for a computing system due to the variety of subject matter, the speed at which contestants must provide accurate responses, and because the clues given to contestants involve analyzing subtle meaning, irony, riddles, and other complexities at which humans excel and computers traditionally do not. Watson will incorporate massively parallel analytical capabilities and, just like human competitors, Watson will not be connected to the Internet or have any other outside assistance.

The essence of making decisions is recognizing patterns in vast amounts of data, sorting through choices and options, and responding quickly and accurately. Watson is a compelling example of how the planet — companies, industries, cities — is becoming smarter. With advanced computing power and deep analytics, we can infuse business and societal systems with intelligence. This project is the latest example of IBM's longstanding commitment to fundamental research and to overcoming grand challenges in science and technology.

Sam Palmisano, IBM Chairman and CEO

"The challenge is to build a system that, like none before it, can rival the mind's ability to determine precise answers to natural language questions and to compute accurate confidences in the answers," said Dr. David Ferrucci, leader of the IBM Watson project team. "This confidence processing ability is key to winning at Jeopardy!. It greatly distinguishes the IBM approach from conventional search, and is critical to implementing useful business applications of question answering." David's team has been working on a highly advanced question answering (QA) system for nearly two years.

More than a game - a game-changer

"Progress on the underlying QA technologies enabling Watson will be important in the quest to understand and build intelligent computing systems capable of cooperating with humans in language-related tasks previously out of reach for computers," added David.

The research underlying Watson is expected to elevate computer intelligence and human-to-computer communication to unprecedented levels. In the future, IBM intends to apply the unique technological capabilities being developed for Watson to help clients across a wide variety of industries answer business questions quickly and accurately.

For example, a doctor could ask questions to identify potential causes of a malady and the proper, personalized treatment based on a patient's medical history, with answers drawn from an information base of millions of similar cases. A retailer can use this system to ask questions about what current outfits or combination of clothes could be put together for individual shoppers based on previous purchases and preferences, and make targeted offers and promotions to those shoppers that have a high likelihood of being attractive and accepted by their shoppers.

IBM's effort to create Watson is aimed at exploring the future of business intelligence, analytics and information management. This exploration is necessary so that we can continue to provide our clients with the most cutting-edge capabilities for finding the information they need from the mountains of data they produce.

One confident computer system

Watson will be designed to deftly handle semantics – the meanings behind words – which will enable it to answer questions that require the identification of relevant and irrelevant content, the interpretation of ambiguous expression and puns, the decomposition of questions into sub-questions, and the logical synthesis of final answers. In addition, Watson will compute a statistical confidence in the responses it provides. Watson will be designed to do all of this in a matter of seconds, which will enable it to compete against people, who have the ability to know what they know in less than a second.

If you had Watson for a day, what would you do?

If you had Watson for a day, how would you use it? How could you apply this technology to your area of work? For you, for your clients? To help build a smarter planet?

[*zeo]

Not quite, we're a long way from making something self aware like Skynet but this is a good step towards making an IRONMAN type JARVIS.