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IBM: In 5 Years, Watson A.I. will be Behind your Every Decision

posted by janrinok on Saturday October 29 2016, @01:47AM   Printer-friendly
from the not-here-it-won't dept.

Phoenix666 writes:

In the next five years, every important decision, whether it's business or personal, will be made with the assistance of IBM Watson. That's the vision of IBM president and CEO Ginni Rometty, in a keynote speech at IBM's World of Watson conference Wednesday.

Watson, the company's artificial intelligence-fueled system, is working in fields like health care, finance, entertainment and retail, connecting businesses more easily with their customers, making sense of big data and helping doctors find treatments for cancer patients.

The Watson system is set to transform how businesses function and how people live their lives. "Our goal is augmenting intelligence," Rometty said. "It is man and machine. This is all about extending your expertise. A teacher. A doctor. A lawyer. It doesn't matter what you do. We will extend it."

Is one woman's vision another man's nightmare?

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @06:23PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 29 2016, @06:23PM (#420195)

    Nobody seems to be doing a good job of working out what the energy costs of all this AI will be.

    And before someone starts whining about tiny AI circuits doing lens management in their smartphone camera, I'm talking about the deep AI stuff; something that is smart enough to understand a pun, analyse legal ambiguities and the track record of a given judge, and suggest to a composer how the timbral shifts in the synths could be used to match the rise of tension with the movie action.

    I can not see it taking any less than several amps of wall current, which quickly puts you in the territory of needing infrastructure, which ramps up your running costs ... not to mention all the sensitive patient/client/banking security requirements that your new electronic friends will require.

    And what's the incremental benefit to a basic mechanic? To a drywaller? To a receptionist? To replace those people entirely you'd need a very high order of robotics as well, and that ramps the cost way higher.

    It all sounds very nice, very Star Trek. But the economics don't look so good - and once you add in the fossil fuel crunch, they look a lot worse.