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Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Watson as a Cognitive Technology

Was told that IBM has just refreshed their Watson site.  Just examined it. IBM now positioning it as a cognitive technology. No longer called AI or Expert Systems, which was the common parlance in our day.  The positioning is interesting too: " ... Watson is a cognitive technology that processes information more like a human than a computer—by understanding natural language, generating hypotheses based on evidence and learning as it goes. ... ".  

I emphasize the statement that it is 'more like a human', rather than any claims of intelligence.    Sounds good.  Also, because humans use many tools beyond raw intelligence, as Watson will as well.  Key is how to integrate analytics tools, data and cognition.  Interacting with human expertise.  Site includes video, and implication that early applications are in health care.

Example given: " ...  Revolutionizing Genomics and Personalized Medicine with IBM Watson After a decade of R&D, an IBM Watson™ prototype for genomic research is planned to be used in a clinical study to fight brain cancer. ... "  Just discussed this with a company that have been doing a proof of concept in the area.  More will follow.

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