IBM Offers ‘Jeopardy’ Winner Watson as Cloud Application Tool
businessweek.com
businessweek.com
Basically, I feel like you're asking for peer-reviewed papers that show that Dropbox is a good way to share files. Nobody would write a paper about that. They would just try Dropbox.
Watson IS marketing. Always has been. It is a way to show off IBM's capabilities, in order to improve their brand and their bottom line. So now they are trying to monetize it as a product. If it has some academic interest, that is just an added bonus, but not its core purpose.
This is just business in the corporate world, and there is no expectation of peer-reviewed research when selling software products.
Done right they could be sitting on the mythical Star Trek computer here, being trained by paying customers in how to answer questions about a wide range of industries.
Just off the top of my head I can think of a ton of features in our application which could be enhanced with access to a computer that has been primed with the accumulated knowledge of the Internet.
The message is that 'this is the next step in / new Big Data'. Huge companies that spend loads on R&D have amassed a base of proprietary technologies which provide them a real competitive advantage.
Like bioinformatics, jet packs, and (well hell, big data), I'd say the vision (presented as current reality) is probably far ahead of what will be possible in reality in the next 10 years.
Clearly, Watson was able to answer structured questions it had been specifically prepared for, with a certain amount of pre-work done parsing the problem to get it into an easily computer solvable form.
This not the startrek computer, which can answer any questions. It needs a programmer to show it how to answer each specific type of question.
But it is cool. The majority of knowledge still lives in word docs and power points, in spoken meetings and peoples heads. If this developing set of technologies allows us to work with that amorphous info bulk, even in a simple way, you can see the potential for humand development.
The IBM I used to know had a tendency to tightly couple all of their products and offerings, to the point of making it uncompetitive/unattractive in the market. This makes sense when you consider that IBM has been going through 6 straight quarters of declining revenue, and their Systems & Technology Group being unable to turn a profit despite thousands of employee layoffs. Assuming this announcement is no different, I expect this new offering to be proprietary, SAAS-like, and rife with restrictions limiting application development to an IBM-approved stack (Rational, Jazz, DB2, etc).
I have no doubt that Watson is an excellent piece of technology, but I believe IBM's executive and CEO leadership will mess this up by treating this offering the same way as their consulting and hardware services.
But anyways, it could be really useful in consumer healthcare, especially considering the low usage of consumer healthcare among older people[1].
[1]Only 30% of 50+ people and 13% of 65+ people, use internet to help in medical diagnosis
There are no upfront cost for access and partners who use the service in their apps will be charged on a metered usage model, Gold said. He declined to comment on expected sales from the service.
Application developers, from startups to established businesses, can submit their requests to use Watson’s services on IBM’s website beginning this week, said Lori Bosio, a spokeswoman for the company.
There are no upfront cost for access and partners who use the service in their apps will be charged on a metered usage model, Gold said. He declined to comment on expected sales from the service.