IBM Watson and Research
August 29, 2014
The IBM Watson content marketing machine grinds on. This time, IBM’s Hail Mary is making Watson into a research assistant. Let’s see. Watson does cancer treatment, recipe invention, and insurance analyses. “IBM Sees Broader Role for Watson in Airing Research” the operative word is “sees”, not hipping, sold, market dominance, and similar “got it done” phrases. Heck, there’s not even a public demo on Wikipedia data or a collection of patents.
The write up cheers me forward with:
With the aid of Watson, companies could better mine that private information and combine it with scientific data in the public domain.
One company studying such possibilities to evaluate medications and treatments is Johnson & Johnson, IBM said. But the company sees applications beyond the health realm, including making automated suggestions based on financial, legal, energy and intelligence-related information, IBM said.
Watson has to generate lots of dough and fast. IBM expects the Watson “system” to produce billions in revenue in five or six years. What Watson is producing is more credibility problems for search vendors with technology that “sort of” works.
I had a query yesterday from a consultant whose client wants to use IBM Watson technology. I suggested that if IBM will fund the quest for a brass ring, go for it. Have a Plan B.
In the meantime, I find the Watson arabesques pretty darned interesting. With HP planning billions from Autonomy, where is this money going to come from. No one seems to think much about the need to have a product that solves a problem for a specific company.
No “saids” or “sees” required. Just a business built on open source technology and home grown code. IBM is fascinating as is its content marketing methods. Quite an end of summer announcement. How about a live demo? I am weary of Jeopardy references.
Stephen E Arnold, August 29, 2014
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