IBM Watson System
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An IBM Watson System is a corpus real-time semantic analysis system produced by IBM.
- Context:
- It can be used to develope a Watson-based Application.
- It can (typically) use a Watson Content Store.
- It can support an IBM Watson QA API[1].
- It can be supported by a Watson Developer Cloud instance (managed by a Watson Experiment Manager).
- It can be supported by a Watson Talent Hub.
- …
- Example(s):
- The IBM Watson Jeopardy! System, of February 15, 2011.
- a Watson-based Clinical Decision Making Assistant[2].
- A Watson-based Shopping Decision Making Assistant[3].
- …
- Counter-Example(s):
- an Lex Platform, and Alexa Skills.
- a Lingpipe-based System.
- a SQuASH System.
- IBM's Deep Blue.
- See: IBM DeepQA Project, UIMA, IBM Watson Conversation, WellPoint, Question Answering, Natural Language, Principal Investigator, Clinical Decision Support System.
References
2017
- (Wikipedia, 2017) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(computer) Retrieved:2017-6-19.
- Watson is a question answering computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language, developed in IBM's DeepQA project by a research team led by principal investigator David Ferrucci. Watson was named after IBM's first CEO, industrialist Thomas J. Watson. The computer system was specifically developed to answer questions on the quiz show Jeopardy! and, in 2011, the Watson computer system competed on Jeopardy! against former winners Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings winning the first place prize of $1 million. Watson had access to 200 million pages of structured and unstructured content consuming four terabytes of disk storage including the full text of Wikipedia, but was not connected to the Internet during the game. For each clue, Watson's three most probable responses were displayed on the television screen. Watson consistently outperformed its human opponents on the game's signaling device, but had trouble in a few categories, notably those having short clues containing only a few words. In February 2013, IBM announced that Watson software system's first commercial application would be for utilization management decisions in lung cancer treatment at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York City, in conjunction with health insurance company WellPoint. IBM Watson's former business chief, Manoj Saxena, says that 90% of nurses in the field who use Watson now follow its guidance.
2017
- (Wikipedia, 2017) ⇒ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(computer)#Current_and_future_applications Retrieved:2017-6-19.
- According to IBM, "The goal is to have computers start to interact in natural human terms across a range of applications and processes, understanding the questions that humans ask and providing answers that humans can understand and justify." It has been suggested by Robert C. Weber, IBM's general counsel, that Watson may be used for legal research. The company also intends to use Watson in other information-intensive fields, such as telecommunications, financial services, and government. Watson is based on commercially available IBM Power 750 servers that have been marketed since February 2010. IBM also intends to market the DeepQA software to large corporations, with a price in the millions of dollars, reflecting the $1 million needed to acquire a server that meets the minimum system requirement to operate Watson. IBM expects the price to decrease substantially within a decade as the technology improves. Commentator Rick Merritt said that "there's another really important reason why it is strategic for IBM to be seen very broadly by the American public as a company that can tackle tough computer problems. A big slice of [IBM's profit] comes from selling to the U.S. government some of the biggest, most expensive systems in the world." In 2013, it was reported that three companies were working with IBM to create apps embedded with Watson technology. Fluid is developing an app for retailers, one called "The North Face", which is designed to provide advice to online shoppers. Welltok is developing an app designed to give people advice on ways to engage in activities to improve their health. MD Buyline is developing an app for the purpose of advising medical institutions on equipment procurement decisions. In November 2013, IBM announced it would make Watson's API available to software application providers, enabling them to build apps and services that are embedded with Watson's capabilities. To build out its base of partners who create applications on the Watson platform, IBM consults with a network of venture capital firms, which advise IBM on which of their portfolio companies may be a logical fit for what IBM calls the Watson Ecosystem. Thus far, roughly 800 organizations and individuals have signed up with IBM, with interest in creating applications that could use the Watson platform. On January 30, 2013, it was announced that Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute would receive a successor version of Watson, which would be housed at the Institute's technology park and be available to researchers and students. By summer 2013, Rensselaer had become the first university to receive a Watson computer. On February 6, 2014, it was reported that IBM plans to invest $100 million in a 10-year initiative to use Watson and other IBM technologies to help countries in Africa address development problems, beginning with healthcare and education. On June 3, 2014, three new Watson Ecosystem partners were chosen from more than 400 business concepts submitted by teams spanning 18 industries from 43 countries. “These bright and enterprising organizations have discovered innovative ways to apply Watson that can deliver demonstrable business benefits", said Steve Gold, vice president, IBM Watson Group. The winners were Majestyk Apps with their adaptive educational platform, FANG (Friendly Anthropomorphic Networked Genome); Red Ant with their retail sales trainer; and GenieMD with their medical recommendation service. On July 9, 2014, Genesys Telecommunications Laboratories announced plans to integrate Watson to improve their customer experience platform, citing the sheer volume of customer data to analyze is staggering. Watson has been integrated with databases including Bon Appétit magazine to perform a recipe generating platform. Watson is being used by Decibel, a music discovery startup, in its app MusicGeek which uses the supercomputer to provide music recommendations to its users. The use of the artificial intelligence of Watson has also been found in hospitality industry. GoMoment uses Watson for its Rev1 app, which gives hotel staff a way to quickly respond to questions from guests. Arria NLG has built an app that helps energy companies stay within regulatory guidelines, making it easier for managers to make sense of thousands of pages of legal and technical jargon. OmniEarth, Inc. uses Watson computer vision services to analyze satellite and aerial imagery, along with other municipal data, to infer water usage on a property-by-property basis, helping water districts in drought-stricken California improve water conservation efforts. In September 2016, Condé Nast has started using IBM's Watson to help build and strategize social influencer campaigns for brands. Using software built by IBM and Influential, Condé Nast's clients will be able to know which influencer's demographics, personality traits and more best align with a marketer and the audience it is targeting. In May 2017, IBM partnered with the Pebble Beach Company to use Watson as a concierge. Watson's artificial intelligence was added to an app developed by Pebble Beach and was used to guide visitors around the resort. The mobile app was designed by IBM iX and hosted on the IBM Cloud. It uses Watson's Conversation applications programming interface.