

IBM Offers ‘Jeopardy’ Winner Watson as Cloud Application Tool - kojoman
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2013-11-14/ibm-offers-jeopardy-winner-watson-as-cloud-application-tool

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JunkDNA
There is so much marketing around Watson and so little _data_. I feel like a
broken record every time this comes up, but where are the peer-reviewed
research papers with data showing Watson's superior utility in real world
settings like hospitals?

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lincolnq
I don't quite understand why you're demanding this. As I see it, Watson is
still pretty experimental and we're probably still learning what kind of stuff
it's good or bad at. Why not build a few apps, throw it at hospitals or
schools or other use cases, and see whether it actually helps anyone?

Basically, I feel like you're asking for peer-reviewed papers that show that
Dropbox is a good way to share files. Nobody would write a paper about that.
They would just try Dropbox.

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willis77
A lot of the hype has been around using Watson as a medical decision support
system, so yes, they do need peer-reviewed papers before "throwing it at
hospitals". In medicine, you can't "see if it helps" without a controlled
experiment. It's just too subtle to see when it's not helping, and also too
late.

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the906
I believe if you look at the IBM sites you'll find a number of case studies
that display some of the results of applications using Watson.

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jon-wood
It all depends on just how the API works, but this has potential to be huge
for IBM.

Done right they could be sitting on the mythical Star Trek computer here,
being trained by paying customers in how to answer questions about a wide
range of industries.

Just off the top of my head I can think of a ton of features in our
application which could be enhanced with access to a computer that has been
primed with the accumulated knowledge of the Internet.

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shubb
IBM / Gartner call Watson type tech 'Smart Machines'. They extend that
definition out to things like HP Autonomy, Google, and other systems that
integrate huge amounts of data in order to make decisions that seem almost
inteligent.

The message is that 'this is the next step in / new Big Data'. Huge companies
that spend loads on R&D have amassed a base of proprietary technologies which
provide them a real competitive advantage.

Like bioinformatics, jet packs, and (well hell, big data), I'd say the vision
(presented as current reality) is probably far ahead of what will be possible
in reality in the next 10 years.

Clearly, Watson was able to answer structured questions it had been
specifically prepared for, with a certain amount of pre-work done parsing the
problem to get it into an easily computer solvable form.

This not the startrek computer, which can answer any questions. It needs a
programmer to show it how to answer each specific type of question.

But it is cool. The majority of knowledge still lives in word docs and power
points, in spoken meetings and peoples heads. If this developing set of
technologies allows us to work with that amorphous info bulk, even in a simple
way, you can see the potential for humand development.

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jmsduran
As a former IBM'er, I can't help but view this announcement with a fair bit of
skepticism.

The IBM I used to know had a tendency to tightly couple all of their products
and offerings, to the point of making it uncompetitive/unattractive in the
market. This makes sense when you consider that IBM has been going through 6
straight quarters of declining revenue, and their Systems & Technology Group
being unable to turn a profit despite thousands of employee layoffs. Assuming
this announcement is no different, I expect this new offering to be
proprietary, SAAS-like, and rife with restrictions limiting application
development to an IBM-approved stack (Rational, Jazz, DB2, etc).

I have no doubt that Watson is an excellent piece of technology, but I believe
IBM's executive and CEO leadership will mess this up by treating this offering
the same way as their consulting and hardware services.

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draugadrotten
Oh if only Apple could license Watson to replace Siri.

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hershel
I wonder if they open this for applications that help software developers and
engineers or leave it closed because of their main consulting business?

But anyways, it could be really useful in consumer healthcare, especially
considering the low usage of consumer healthcare among older people[1].

[1]Only 30% of 50+ people and 13% of 65+ people, use internet to help in
medical diagnosis

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brianbreslin
Can I use Watson cloud to compete on Jeopardy or other gameshows? build it
into a google glass app or something?

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tluyben2
It says 'offers' so that's current right? Where do I sign up?

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JoachimSchipper
Start at
[http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/getting_started.s...](http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/getting_started.shtml),
which is pretty easy to find from a search for "watson ibm request".

