Items tagged with watson
IBM took its most recent AI system, dubbed Project Debater, and entered it into a competition against human debating champions. The event was held at the IBM Watson West site in San Francisco, California. Project Debater started by preparing arguments for and against the following statement: “We should subsidize space exploration.” The IBM AI and its human opponent, Noa Ovadia, each delivered a four-minute opening statement, four-minute rebuttal and a two-minute summary. IBM notes that Project Debater made an opening argument that supported the statement with facts including the benefits of space exploration for mankind. Ovadia opposed the statement arguing that there are better applications...
Read more...
IBM is boldly going where no company has gone before. IBM just announced that Ubisoft’s Star Trek: Bridge Crew VR game will incorporate Watson's interactive speech and cognitive capabilities.IBM Chief Developer Advocate Willie Tejada, remarked, “For the first time, Watson will power the technology that makes it possible for gamers and fans of Star Trek to interact with the crew. We are only just seeing the impact of virtual and augmented reality and IBM is committed to providing developers with the tools they need to innovate and be competitive in this AI and Cognitive era.” Watson will allow players to give interactive voice commands to virtual members of Starfleet. They will also be able to...
Read more...
IBM has just made available to developers an experimental version of Project Intu, a system agnostic platform that allows for the integration of Watson capabilities into various end-user form factors. With Project Intu, developers can incorporate cognitive experiences into a variety of products and services, including avatars, robots, drones, and the growing Internet of Things (IoT) category, to name a few. One could view this as a step towards bringing machine learning into consumer devices and everyday products. Forget about today's crop of digital assistants like Siri and Cortana, Project Intu could lead to much more immersive experiences by enabling devices to interact in a more natural way...
Read more...
We've long been promised that computers will be able to make us healthier, which of course includes being able to detect and fight cancers. Now, we see a real-life example of that happening, and thanks is owed to IBM's powerful Watson supercomputer. When a Japanese patient had some form of leukemia that doctors were unable to pinpoint, IBM's Watson was brought in to compare their genetic records to more than 20 million others against this patient's. Fortunately, doing so proved successful, as the patient's exact variant was found. Not only that, Watson's helped this patient receive treatment a lot quicker than they would have, and best of all? It proved successful. While doctors are able...
Read more...
Artificial Intelligence is sort of the holy grail of computing, and while we may never reproduce the human brain or it's capabilities in their entirety in electronic form, the world's brightest minds are now capable of creating rather convincing systems that are beginning to learn more sophisticated concepts and even learn on their own. IBM is proving that with its constantly improving Watson cognitive computing technology, which one day might have us struggling to perceive the line between AI and organic intelligence. You might be surprised at the progress that's been made. In the early 1990s, Creative Labs bundled an amusing bit of software with its Sound Blaster card called Dr. Sbaitso. It...
Read more...
Watson made a name for itself when IBM paraded the artificially intelligent computer system on Jeopardy and pitted it against the game show's two biggest winners of all-time -- Ken Jennings, who holds the record for the longest winning streak, and Brad Rutter, the all-time money winner. The supercomputer vanquished its human and flesh opponents, but more importantly, it introduced the world to IBM's impressive technology. Oh, and by the way, you can tap into that big brain of Watson's, for a price. IBM announced that Watson Analystics, a breakthrough natural language-based cognitive service that can provide instant access to powerful predictive and visual analytic tools for businesses, is available...
Read more...
We often joke about the machines that humans build coming back to rule the planet, but you have to wonder if IBM's Watson isn't scheming in a way that mere mortals can only hope to comprehend. IBM's Watson group has acquired a new company this week, which will enable Watson to become even smarter than it already is. The new acquisition is Cognea, which is said to be an artificial intelligence outfit focusing on "cognitive computing and conversational AI." To date, Cognea has partnered with HP, NASA, and others for virtual assistant program. Specifically, Cognea offers "virtual assistants that relate to people using a wide variety of personalities—from suit-and-tie formal to kid-next-door...
Read more...
When you're a computer capable of beating some of the world's greatest chess players, why keep all of that knowledge to yourself? That's a question that IBM is posing to its wildly intelligent supercomputer, Watson, and it appears that Watson has an answer. This week, IBM announced that, for the first time, it will make its IBM Watson technology available as a development platform in the cloud, to enable a worldwide community of software application providers to build a new generation of apps infused with Watson's cognitive computing intelligence. Why make such a move? According to IBM, the move aims to "spur innovation and fuel a new ecosystem of entrepreneurial software application providers...
Read more...
When IBM’s Watson supercomputer proved that the meatsack we call a human brain was inferior to its robot intellect on TV’s Jeopardy, it was an entertaining parlor trick-style PR stunt to show that Watson was capable of “learning”. Now, IBM is putting Watson to use in real life by deploying it in the medical field. According to a Forbes report, IBM has partnered with Memorial Sloan-Kettering and WellPoint to employ Watson to help doctors treat lung cancer patients. Hospitals can access Watson via the cloud or with their own small (not nearly the size of the beast we all saw on Jeopardy) server. The report notes further that Watson’s processing power has also since...
Read more...
Well... I'm sure this isn't what the designers behind IBM's Watson supercomputer had in mind when it came to human interaction. As it turns out, Watson, as smart as it is, cannot tell the difference between English words that are appropriate, and then not-so-appropriate. You might immediately realize when a word is derogatory - even if you've never heard it before - but no such luck with Watson. It's a mere computer, after all. The discovery of the issue came about when Watson took on the task of memorizing the entirety of UrbanDictionary - the online human-edited slang dictionary. If you want to know the meaning behind "iFatigue", for example, it's there (for the record, that's the...
Read more...
IBM's Watson is soon to hit a major milestone: it'll begin to deal with real patients. You might recall that this is one of the major goals IBM laid out for Watson back at its inception. As a "learning" computer, Watson has the ability to peruse information, understand it to the best of its ability, and then develop algorithms based on the information it's learned to help produce some (hopefully) accurate guidance to the patients it deals with. While the ultimate plan is to have Watson-based computers replace doctors to a small degree, it's never going to be the final answer in a serious diagnosis. The idea is that, with the constant shortage of doctors, Watson will be able to do preliminary...
Read more...
IBM's Watson supercomputing platform gets around. Its most famous appearance was on Jeopardy, where it trounced the two greatest Jeopardy players of all time by correctly (most of the time) answering questions about history and a number of other subjects. Watson wasn't designed for game shows, however, and has gone on to do number crunching chores for Citigroup and assist WellGroup with providing doctors with treatment options based on mountains of data. The next version of Watson could end up on your smartphone. "The power it takes to make Watson work is dropping down like a stone," Bernie Meyerson, IBM's vice president of innovation, told Bloomberg in an interview. "One day, you will have ready...
Read more...
Colossus (from the film "Colossus: The Forbin Project") and Skynet would be proud. IBM's Watson bested its human competition on Jeopardy easily, as it won the second game of the two game, three day event, adding to its total from its earlier game one win to take home the grand prize of $1 million. Watson finished with $77,147, with Ken Jennings coming in second with $24,000 and Brad Rutter last with $21,600. Ken Jennings holds the record for most consecutive Jeopardy wins (74). Meanwhile, Rutter holds the record for the most money won on Jeopardy, $3.25 million. Neither of the humans was able to halt Watson's inexorable rise to the championship. For a time, Ken Jennings had a lead. At one point,...
Read more...
Sorry humans, but it's time to welcome your new robot overlords. After last night's airing of Jeopardy, it's only a matter of time before our gadgets turn against us, perhaps led by Watson or some other equally intelligent creation. You see, Watson is the name given to IBM's supercomputer, which proved both faster and smarter than the two most decorated Jeopardy champions of all time. Watson, which is much too large to fit behind a podium, was represented by an avatar and fed the questions via text. This occurred at the same time Jeopardy host Alex Trebek read the questions out loud to Ken Jennings, who hold's Jeopardy's longest win streak ever at 74 games, and Brad Rutter, whose more than $3.2...
Read more...
