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.

Dr. Watson

Image by mjaniec via Flickr

What: ”Watson was gradually given information about a fictional patient with an eye problem. As more clues were unveiled — blurred vision, family history of arthritis, Connecticut residence — Watson’s suggested diagnoses evolved from uveitis to Behcet’s disease to Lyme disease. It gave the final diagnosis a 73 percent confidence rating.”

How: “The medical version of Watson was trained with medical textbooks and journals, electronic health records, and sample questions from medical students. However, unlike Jeopardy!, where Watson was required to give a single correct answer, researchers are using Watson’s computing power to receive a set of symptoms and offer several possible diagnoses, ranked in order of the computer’s confidence. “

Why: ”Physicians are unlikely to blindly accept a diagnosis from a computer, so Watson’s purpose is to reduce physician’s mistakes by handling information overload, offering multiple options, and helping them not become too attached to a single diagnosis.”

From medGadget here.

Watson Slips Up

Image via Wikipedia

What: “Some brave — and curious — members of Congress made their way to a Capitol Hill hotel Monday evening to square off against a recent “Jeopardy!” sensation named Watson, the IBM-powered supercomputer that handily defeated the game show’s two most successful contestants in history.”

Why: “Brown [a member of the 25-person team that developed Watson] said his team is close to getting the technology to a point where it is ready for everyday use in the worlds of business and government. But for now, we can continue to enjoy watching Watson show off his formidable trivia skills.”

But: “Holt, a five-time champion on the real “Jeopardy!” show, managed to hold his own against Watson for most of the round…beating Watson by amassing “winnings” of $8,600 to $6,200″

Full article at CNN here.

I’m So Much More Than a Machine

I have no words.

In Case You Were Wondering

Question: “So what really is the relation between Wolfram|Alpha and the IBM Jeopardy project?”

Answer:

Image from StephenWolfram.com

If that isn’t obvious enough (?), read the full blog post from Stephen Wolfram here.