Watson = Google. IBM, Of Course!
September 22, 2014
I read “How IBM’s Watson Could Do for Analytics What Search Did for Google.” I urge you to flip through a math book like Calculus on Manifolds: A Modern Approach to Classical Theorems of Advanced Calculus. Although an older book, some of its methods are now creeping into the artificial intelligence revolution that seems to be the next big thing. Then read the Datamation write up.
IBM is rolling out a “freemium model to move Watson, their [sic] English language AI interface for analytics, into the market more aggressively.” What could be more aggressive than university contents, recipes for Bon Appétit, and curing cancer?
The article points out that the only competitor to Watson is Google. Well, that’s an interesting assertion.
Google put an interface on search I learned. The rest is Google’s dominance. Now IBM wants to put an interface on analytics, and—I assume it follows to the thinkers at IBM—IBM’s dominance will tag along.
The article asserts:
We often talk about analytics needing data scientists who have a unique skill set, allowing them to get out the answers needed from highly complex data repositories. Since the results of the analysis are supposed to lead to better executive decisions the ideal skill set would have been an MBA Data Scientist, yet I’ve actually never seen one of those. Folks who are good at deep analysis and folks that are good at business tend to be very different folks, and data scientists are in very short supply at the moment.
Well, someone has to:
- Select numerical recipes
- Set thresholds
- Select process sequences
- Select data and ensure that they are valid
- Set up outputs, making decisions about what to show and what not to show
- Modify when the outputs do not match reality. (I realize that this step is of little interest to some analytics users.)
The article concludes:
The Freemium model has similar advantages. So if you wrap a product that line executives should prefer with an economic model that removes most of the financial barriers, you should end up with a solution that does for IBM what Search did for Google. And that could do some interesting things to the analytics market, creating a similar set of conditions to those that put IBM on top of technology in the last century.
What’s a freemium model? What’s the purpose of the analysis? What’s the method to validate results? What controls does a clueless user have over the Watson system?
Oh, wait. Watson is a search system. Google is a search system that people use. Watson is a search system that few use. Also, IBM still sells mainframes. This is a useful factoid to keep in mind.
Stephen E Arnold, September 22, 2014
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