Watson Creates New Entry for Gartner Hype Cycle

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What: ”Gartner’s 2011 Hype Cycle Special Report provides strategists and planners with an assessment of the maturity, business benefit and future direction of over 1,900 technologies, grouped into 76 distinct Hype Cycles. The Hype Cycle graphic has been used by Gartner since 1995 to highlight the common pattern of overenthusiasm, disillusionment and eventual realism that accompanies each new technology and innovation. The Hype Cycle Special Report is updated annually to track technologies along this cycle and provide guidance on when and where organizations should adopt them for maximum impact and value.”

How: ”a new entry for natural language question answering recognizes the impressive and highly visible achievement of IBM’s Watson computer in winning TV’s Jeopardy! general knowledge quiz against champion human opponents.”

Full overview at MarketWatch.

IBM App Summarises Your Day

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What: “The application [Morning Report] aggregates information from a variety of sources, including email, calendar, Lotus Connections and tasks, providing a quick overview of important information from one easy to access place…”

How: “Morning Report… applies analytics to determine the information that should be highlighted to users, and we are experimenting with a number of analytics approaches to determine the best one.”

Why: “…the app will be able to look for and highlight any changes in the calendar, or be set to show emails or meetings with people who have been flagged as important.  Users will also be able to view information from email, calendar, tasks and Lotus Connections separately, drill into data inline, and drop in information from other sources.”

“Morning Report will be compatible with Apple, Android and BlackBerry devices, although IBM has yet to confirm a release date.”

Full article on V3.

What Next for Watson?

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Understandably, speculation about the commercial future of IBM’s Jeopardy-winning supercomputer Watson is rife.

Here are a few of the confirmed and speculative applications for Watson.

Healthcare: “[IBM] will collaborate with Columbia University and the University of Maryland to create a physician’s assistant service that will allow doctors to query a cybernetic assistant. The company also plans to work with Nuance Communications Inc. to add voice recognition to the physician’s assistant, possibly making the service available in as little as 18 months.”

NYTimes Article.

Retail: “IBM executives also said they are in discussions with a major consumer electronics retailer to develop a version of Watson…that would be able to interact with consumers on a variety of subjects like buying decisions and technical support.”

Customer Support: “…experts speaking about Watson in a series of videos on IBM’s website note that the technology is almost certain to find a home in tech-support call centers. Instead of yelling at a human for not being able to understand why your gadget doesn’t work, Watson will coolly and accurately explain what’s wrong so you can fix it and be on your way.”

Financial Services: “The videos also make clear that the financial services industry is keen to put Watson to use. Just as the machine was able to search through a massive database to come up with the right answer to trivia questions on “Jeopardy!,” researchers imagine Watson being able to sift through piles of financial data to spot the next big thing, potentially more efficiently than highly paid Wall Street analysts.”

National Security: Darren Hayes, New York’s Pace University, ”The focus (on homeland security) has been on information gathering — license plates, credit card transactions, Internet activity, flight manifests, telephone records, bank transactions, and so on — for millions of people. Synthesizing those terabytes of information is tremendously challenging,”

Investors.com Article

Check out the IBM Watson website to find out a series of videos covering what Watson is, how it (he?) was built and expert views from the academic and industrial worlds.

Watson on IBM.com

Watson Obliterates Humans

“IBM’s Watson supercomputer trounced its human competitors in the conclusion of the first round of its Jeopardy challenge.

Watson ended the night with $35,754, while former human Jeopardy champs Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings scored $10,000 and $4,800 respectively.”

See Watson in action from about 4:50 in this video.

But Watson doesn’t always get it right, “in Final Jeopardy…the category of U.S. Cities, the competitors were given a clue about a city whose largest airport is named for a World War II hero, and its second largest is named for a World War II battle. Watson ended up guessing Toronto.”

See the full article at VentureBeat here, and find out why Watson doesn’t like Final Jeopardy here.

IBM and Fortune Telling

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Chicago-based university DePaul University is to offer a course predictive analysis with IBM providing the resources.

“The program aims to teach students the technical skills to do computer-based data mining, including advanced data analysis and the ability to handle large data sets. The degree will require students to take marketing courses as well, which should help them better match their data analysis to the needs of end users.

Although this degree may be the first to be offered in predictive analytics, an increasing number of other U.S. colleges and universities are offering advanced degrees or certificates in data mining, including Central Connecticut State University, the University of Central Florida, and Stanford University.”

Full story at IT World or course prospectus at De Paul.