SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
IBM has recently delivered a string of disappointing quarters, and announced recently that it would take a multibillion-dollar hit to offload its struggling chip business. But Will Knight writes at MIT Technology Review that Watson may have the answer to IBM's uncertain future.
IBM's vast research department was recently reorganized to ramp up efforts related to cognitive computing. The push began with the development of the original Watson, but has expanded to include other areas of software and hardware research aimed at helping machines provide useful insights from huge quantities of often-messy data. “We’re betting billions of dollars, and a third of this division now is working on it,” says John Kelly, director of IBM Research, said of cognitive computing, a term the company uses to refer to artificial intelligence techniques related to Watson.
The hope is that the Watson Business Group, a division aimed making its Jeopardy winning cognitive computing application more of a commercial success, will be able to answer more complicated questions in all sorts of industries, including health care, financial investment, and oil discovery; and that it will help IBM build a lucrative new computer-driven consulting business.
But Watson is still a work in progress. Some companies and researchers testing Watson systems have reported difficulties in adapting the technology to work with their data sets. “It’s not taking off as quickly as they would like,” says Robert Austin. “This is one of those areas where turning demos into real business value depends on the devils in the details. I think there’s a bold new world coming, but not as fast as some people think.”
IBM needs software developers to embrace its vision and build services and apps that use its cognitive computing technology. In May of this year it announced that seven universities would offer computer science classes in cognitive computing and last month IBM revealed a list of partners that have developed applications by tapping into application programming interfaces that access versions of Watson running in the cloud. Big Blue said it will invest $1 billion into the Watson division including $100 million to fund startups developing cognitive apps. “I very much admire the end goal,” says Boris Katz adding that business pressures could encourage IBM’s researchers to move more quickly than they would like. “If the management is patient, they will really go far”.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Monday November 10 2014, @12:12PM
I get the impression that "big data" is so big that algorithms and people can find whatever they want. Given enough data, if you look for trends, you'll find them. It's like looking at equidistant letters in texts. Given enough letters, you'll eventually find all kinds of references to historical events. (Especially if you use Hebrew, and supply your own vowels.) If you have enough big data to search, you'll find almost anything. And, since 2008, Google has gotten worse and worse as a search engine. The more data they get, the sloppier and more imprecise their results are. So if Watson just did what Google did in 2008, provide the ability to do precise searches, they'd be in demand. So far, the kinds of targeted advertising I've seen are ridiculously simplistic. Maybe we're on the leading edge of a major change in artificial intelligence, but I haven't seen it yet.
BTW, what is this Hugh Pickens thing? A bot? It posts here and Slashdot constantly, and the link is to a random wikipedia page. Is it Watson in disguise?
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)