IBM's Watson

IBM's Watson makes Siri look, well, elementary

Compared to Apple's Siri speech-activated personal assistant, IBM's Watson is a genius.

Zooey Deschanel might ask Siri, "Is that rain?"

She might ask Watson, "Who's the author that wrote, 'It was a dark and stormy night'?"

(Edward Bulwer-Lytton, for the literary-minded among you.)

Until now, Watson's tech has been too big to cram into a mobile device. All those smarts takes a room full of servers, an incredible amount of calculations and a thick wire into the electrical mains.

That's about to change.

The power consumption behind Watson's performance is &… Read more

Can IBM's Watson help cancer patients?

Patients at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center may receive cancer diagnoses and treatment with the help of IBM's Watson supercomputer by the end of 2013.

Watson would make diagnoses and suggest treatment approaches that take into account individual patient concerns, the Associated Press reported today.

Using its natural-language processing powers, the artificial intelligence system will study textbooks, oncology studies, and medical records if patients give permission. An advisory panel will test its assessments of increasingly complicated cancer cases. … Read more

One year later, IBM Watson goes to work (and the cloud)

What started out as a research project at IBM has become not only an unbeatable "Jeopardy" champion but also a new line of business for Big Blue. And it's coming to the cloud.

IBM's Watson project proved a big hit when it appeared as a contestant on "Jeopardy" one year ago and proved that machines are indeed smarter than man (I for one welcome our robot overlords.)

And now, IBM is taking Watson to the next level, having created a commercial business unit working to offer Watson both on-premise and as a hosted cloud … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 1550: Are you Hot or Bot? (Podcast)

Amazon wants to be the Netflix of books, and we can't wait. The 9/11 Memorial uses tech to honor the victims memory. If you just use Twitter to lurk, you're not a bot, we're paging Dr. Watson and we want your Android OS name ideas!

Got a question about Watson? Ask away on Reddit

You've probably heard about Watson, IBM's latest smarter-than-you supercomputer. This week it competed against champions on Jeopardy--and won.

Thankfully, Watson is not self-aware (yet), because we all know that once computers become self-aware one of the first things they do is try to wipe out humans, or even humanity itself. If my name was Sarah Connor I'd be nervous right about now.

But that lack of self-awareness doesn't mean Watson can't think for itself, or even speak for itself. In fact, right now you can (sort of) ask Watson questions online on this Reddit thread. It's part of Reddit's popular "Ask Me Anything" (AMA) feature, and while users are encouraged to ask anything, there's no guarantee you'll get a response.

Well, it's not actually Watson that's doing the answering, but the research team that created it, and that's because they don't yet know how to have him do it. That man-machine divide, by the way, is what we'll be addressing on tomorrow's Reporters' Roundtable podcast at noon PT. The topic will be "robobrain vs. humanity."

Still, it's still great that the scienticians who put together such an impressive machine are opening their minds to the public.… Read more

IBM's Watson gets smashed on 'Conan'

"She likes things with big batteries."

These were the words that propelled IBM's Watson from cold, calculating machine to charming talk show guest on "Conan" tonight.

Watson hadn't even broken a sweat in defeating Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, two inferior human beings, in a faintly silly game show.

Appearing on "Conan," though, gave Watson the chance to show his frilly underskirts.

Who likes things with big batteries? Why, Conan sidekick Andy Richter's wife.

"I can love," Watson offered to Richter's question as to whether he is able … Read more

IBM program to take on 'Jeopardy' champions

What is the point?

No, no. I know that the ultimate goal is to have computers far more clever than humans so that humans can relax and be just as stupid as they already know themselves to be.

Still, one can't help but feel a shudder beneath one's shirt at the prospect of an IBM computer program beating 74-time champion Ken Jennings at "Jeopardy."

I was fine with IBM's Deep Blue taking on chess champion Garry Kasparov. The man had been fighting Deep Red all his life, so he was hardly going to be intimidated … Read more