What's Next for IBM's Watson?
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We're not sure if what we're about to confess will solidify our status as geeks at heart or if it will have our fellow bipeds accusing us of treachery, but here goes. We rooted for Watson. That's right, we cheered when Watson answered Jeopardy questions correctly and wiped the sweat from our brow when, after starting strong, Watson appeared, well, human by giving quirky answers. As enthusiasts of technology, we wanted Watson to win, and it did, quite handily as it turned out. So what's next on Watson's agenda? Wheel of Fortune, perhaps?
It appears Watson's game show days are over, and the supercomputer's next role could be as a telemarketer. At the very least, IBM envisions Watson being used as some sort of tool in the sales field, as was revealed by IBM Vice President and CIO Jeanett Horan at a recent luncheon in New York City, eWeek reports. It all starts internally, where Watson will first be used to help IBM sell Watson technology to other companies.
"We're looking at a project to do an internal Watson to look at all the information our salespeople need and to take all that information and build a source of information for our people," Horan said.
Where Watson goes from there is still up in the air, though IBM officials have said the first business application will come in healthcare. Watson could serve as physician's assistant or work in collaborative medicine solutions. Watson could also end up fielding technical support calls for help desks and call centers. As far as sales and support go, Extreme Tech points to the possibility of having Watson on the sales floor at Best Buy or support departments for large companies.
Cost quickly becomes an issue. DeepQA, the hardware behind Watson, is not only powerful but expensive. Watson is comprised of 10 server racks with Power 750 servers, 2,880 processor cores, and 15TB of RAM. IBM hasn't put a price tag on Watson, but the components individually add up to around $30 million.
Image Credit: IBM
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Keith E. Whisman
July 09, 2011 at 7:49pm
I heard that Watson wants to enter the Porn industry as a male star. OK just use your imagination.
iceman08
July 08, 2011 at 3:39pm
This computer shows me the roots of a scifi series I read: Jane from Ender's Game saga. If you don't know, it's a sentient computer program that started out as a child psychology game turning into a financial analyzer, then becoming Jane
bowei006
July 08, 2011 at 1:13pm
We are on Maximum PC for facts for the newest and best things. Sure this fits in but i just want to say that Watson is basicaly IBM's 2004 supercomputer that has now been rendered obsoltete by Japans 8Petaflop machine and China's almost 3Petaflop one
Caboose
July 08, 2011 at 11:51am
Watson shall go on to have little Watson babies, that will power the Nintendo Wii U
Wingzero_x
July 08, 2011 at 10:28am
Sales, such a waste...I was hoping it would go on more game shows and eventually in to an entertainment career. Watson would be awesome reviving Shatners old spoken-word Priceline commercials...And is there anybody better to play HAL in the 2001 remake?
bowei006
July 08, 2011 at 1:14pm
it should with that much processing power, but the architecture would not run as it wasn't designed to run windows or any sort of consumer OS
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