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IBM via AFP - Getty Images
IBM's Watson computer is made up of a cluster of 90 computer servers with a total of 2,880 processor cores.
It was nice of Watson to donate its $1 million in "Jeopardy!" winnings to charity this week, but don't think for a second that the human-thumping, question-answering machine is purely philanthropic. There are high hopes Watson will make plenty of companies and people piles of money.
To get things started, on Thursday IBM and Nuance Communications announced a collaboration "to explore, develop and commercialize the Watson computing system's advanced analytics capabilities in the healthcare industry."
The collaboration, which also involves Columbia University and the University of Maryland, could lead, for example, to a know-it-all medical assistant. Instead of explaining symptoms to a flesh-and-bone doctor, you'll tell them to Doc Watson. After mulling the information for a split second, the machine will identify what you likely have and prescribe a treatment.
The first commercial offerings could be available in 18 months. Hospitals and clinics may gobble up the technology. What's more, the existence of Doc Watson would likely change what students in medical school study, Herbert Chase, who is working on the project at Columbia University, told the New York Times.
"I have been in medical education for 40 years and we're still a very memory-based curriculum," he said. "The power of Watson-like tools will cause us to reconsider what it is we want students to do."
Consumer interaction
IBM executives also told the newspaper they are in discussions with a major consumer electronics retailer to develop a version of Watson that can interact with consumers to help them with buying decisions and technical support.
Specifics on the project are thin, but experts speaking about Watson in a series of videos on IBM's website note that the technology is almost certain to find a home in tech-support call centers. Instead of yelling at a human for not being able to understand why your gadget doesn't work, Watson will coolly and accurately explain what's wrong so you can fix it and be on your way.
The videos also make clear that the financial services industry is keen to put Watson to use. Just as the machine was able to search through a massive database to come up with the right answer to trivia questions on "Jeopardy!," researchers imagine Watson being able to sift through piles of financial data to spot the next big thing, potentially more efficiently than highly paid Wall Street analysts.
"If you simultaneously see all the research, and financial news, market news, economic information, you could start to ask questions such as which companies are most likely to be acquisition targets over the next three months," said Jay Dweck, who the video identifies as a financial services executive.
Dweck left a position this January as head of a quantitative software and modeling group in Morgan Stanley's sales and trading division, Bloomberg reported. While there, he built and managed software programs that handle trading. Watson, it appears, is envisioned as the next evolution in so-called quant funds, where sophisticated computer models are used to make investment decisions.
A lawyer and consultant?
Other potential applications for Watson's technology may be found in helping legal professionals comb through law cases and civic planners study and resolve traffic issues, according to Investor's Business Daily.
Watson might also have a future as a consultant to the Department of Homeland Security, Darren Hayes, a computer information systems program chairman at New York's Pace University, told the financial news service.
"The focus (on homeland security) has been on information gathering — license plates, credit card transactions, Internet activity, flight manifests, telephone records, bank transactions, and so on — for millions of people. Synthesizing those terabytes of information is tremendously challenging," he said.
Essentially, any task that currently employs intelligent humans to sift through piles of data to find an answer may soon be replaced by Watson. That could free up some professionals such as doctors from rote memorization, but it could also put thousands of people out of work, from call center staffers to legal assistants and financial analysts in a bid to boost the corporate bottom line.
More stories about Watson:
- Beyond 'Jeopardy': Watson wins
- Supercomputer crushes competition on 'Jeopardy'
- Computer beats 'Jeopardy' champs in test round
- IBM's Watson may help with future trips to the doctor
John Roach is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by hitting the "like" button on the Cosmic Log Facebook page or following msnbc.com's science editor, Alan Boyle, on Twitter (@b0yle).
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Bow low to your new overlord.
Well, congratulations to IBM. I think the Jeopardy "match" was not so much a game pitting humans against a mega computer, as it was a gigantic informercial for IBM.
The human language interpreter is impressive along with the massive memory and parallel speed but the technology to identify trivia or anything else has been around for some time. This because trivia questions and answers are explicitly linked as dependent and independent variables which may be dynamically classified as independent variables come in for rapid identification of the dependent variable. The idea was developed by Dr. Rypka at Lovelace and has been published online for several years. The engine mathematics and application example begin here:
They can start with the Patent & Trade Office.
That place is a disaster of broad and prior art getting a green light.
Creating a program to interpret a diagnosis from medical symptoms is a far more difficult problem than simple trivia answers to relatively dictionary-based, table indexed, cross-linked dependent third normal eigenvectors. Did you see the results Watson produced when cross ambiguity and 5th normal ordered eigenvalues were part of the Jeopardy questions? Watson wasn't even in the ballpark. Unfortunately, most medical symptoms are common across dozens if not hundreds of diseases and no computer can interpret these deep eigenspaces. Typical IBM arrogance. I wouldn't want a computer diagnosing my disease nor should it be involved in interpreting financial data. Haven't we learned about relying on computer models for the financial disaster of 2008? Typical human arrogance. We think we can model ambiguity and uncertainty with accuracy. We'll never learn.
The "financial disaster of 2008" had nothing to do with computer models. It had to do with criminal fraud at the highest level ignoring the computer models. The Wall Street crooks stole the wealth and economy of the middle class of the world to enrich the wealthiest. These guys made Bernie Madoff look like a petty shoplifter.
Actually, I think Watson could be invaluable in helping patients with multiple confusing symptoms get a diagnosis. Some rare diseases have seemingly non-related symptoms spread out over a number of months or years, and one single doctor can't seem to figure out the big picture. You know, like the blind men each trying to describe an elephant based on which part he's touching?
Add in the ability of Watson to factor in lab tests, scan results, and genetic data, and Wow!
Loved the Jeopardy challenge---not crazy about Watson-only medical diagnoses. And using Watson to pick stocks---great as long as I get to use him, too. Otherwise, the top 2% richest people will control 98% of wealth.
Top 10 uses for Watson
Top 10 uses for Watson
But remember the old school quote: "Garbage in- garbage out". What happens if a self teaching machine is introduced to inaccurate data and then makes a series of decisions based on that inaccuracy, each deduction in the chain getting further and further from the actual truth.
We already rely on too many machines inour daily living; I am not ready to put my health solely in the hands of machines.
But you will put your life in the hands of a DR?
Will answers this How long should a doctor practice Medicine?
rather than criticizing Watson...perhaps this is the beginning of a functioning mega computer with artificial intelligence. Colors of the Matrix or the Terminator movies. Without the dire consequences.
Why would anyone name anything after a man who was a convicted criminal, an overt bigot and racist and a crypto-fascist who provided material support to the Nazi regime throughout world war 2 and collected his royalties through Swiss banks. This is not a "conspiracy theory" - Ask IBM if this is true.
Is this the beginning of the real world "Skynet"??
Watson could be useful as a first step screening/suggestion tool in overworked clinic settings provided it was backed up by a human consult AND that the human consult was educated/trained/smart enough NOT to take its diagnosis as handed down from God without some personal patient evaluation. It would not only save on time/resources: it might also help bring about correct diagnoses/treatments from doctors who are either incompetent or momentarily too stressed to do their jobs properly.
As far as this statement goes: "the technology is almost certain to find a home in tech-support call centers. Instead of yelling at a human for not being able to understand why your gadget doesn't work, Watson will coolly and accurately explain what's wrong so you can fix it and be on your way." I believe that I've already experienced such a thing on one or two tech calls in recent years.
- MJM
Will Watson replace all the call centers in India.
A few thoughts:
Only the wealthiest of corporations will have Watsons. Only they can afford them. Kiss competition between businesses goodbye forever, because Watson will maximize profits beyond the ability of any small business owner.
When your doc-bot decides to amputate limbs when it makes a mistaken diagnosis, what will you do? A better WebMD.com is not what the Watson creators are talking about here. The logical intent is to replace human doctors eventually.
When your Watson military-grade bot realizes that the problem with a population in a warzone is all of the armed soldiers, and then proceeds to kill all the soldiers on *both* sides, how can you argue with its logic? It IS the best logical machine humanity has made to date. Note: pure logic denies humanity, and is unhealthy for the human race.
"Won't that be grand? The computers will start thinking, and the people will stop." - quote from the movie Tron, from the 1980's.
Read William Gibson's book "Neuromancer", and you'll see where Watson will lead us.
Wasn't it Voltaire who said that even if God didn't exist, we would have to create Him?
*shakes head in dismay at the stupidity of humanity*
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Hmmmm at what point will the brilliant machine realize that the world of humans, is nothing more than a parasite to the planet and begin the extermination of humans. This sounds like the beginning of Cyberdyne systems.
Once this A.I. (HAL for those of you who know what that means.) controls military actions and deployment we are done for.