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IBM's Watson For Business: The $1 Billion Siri Slayer
- eggoa 13y ago“allows business users to send natural language questions and raw data sets into the cloud, for Watson to crunch, uncover, and visualize insights; without the need for advanced analytics training. After analyzing the data, Watson will deliver results to its users through graphic representations that are easy to understand, interact with, and share with colleagues; all in a matter of minutes.” This sounds a lot like my present job description.
- rapht 13y agoAnd mine too ! Better become a software engineer, I guess...
- tsunamifury 13y agoRemember, no one cares about data, they want a story and the evidence to back that up. Watson may just make it easier for you to focus on the story telling and evidence rather than the crunching.
- pervycreeper 13y agoI wonder if the medical profession's refusal to adopt Watson has more to do with its performance or with guild protectionism.
- gamegoblin 13y agoMy field of research is in machine learning, and upon chatting with medical folks about recent machine learning breakthroughs that outperform panels of experts at making diagnoses, they are all extremely resistant and think that using AI in medicine is somehow immoral. I'd personally want to be diagnosed by a panel of experts with access to said AI.
- wil421 13y agoIt may not be immoral but I doubt the malpractice insurance companies are going to back Doctors who rely on an AI to make diagnoses. I agree that a combination of a panel and AI would make me feel better about a diagnoses.
- the906 13y agoOh yeah this would never be purely AI...think of Watson like the Tardis and the Doctor like ...The Doctor. They go hand in hand, Watson simply makes it so the Doctor doesn't have to waste time.
- wil421 13y agoOr maybe ziggy from quantum leap.
- julespitt 13y agoIf the AI is more reliable than human diagnosis, actuarially speaking, the AI would be preferred by insurance companies. Assuming it was more reliable, of course.
- ProblemFactory 13y agoI would expect that Watson is used as a discovery, not a decision tool - something to point out the symptoms as matching an uncommon disease that the doctor had not otherwise considered. There are around 500 000 biology and medical research papers published per year (http://www.stm-assoc.org/2012_12_11_STM_Report_2012.pdf http://www.stm-assoc.org/2012_12_11_STM_Report_2012.pdf), and it's completely impossible for a doctor to keep up with all of the latest knowledge. A search engine can help a lot in discovering otherwise unnoticed connections. I'm not sure how insurance companies are going to approach this - but "the computer agrees with my decision" seems to be a good defense argument in a malpractice case. And if the end result is statistically better, then insurance companies will adjust their prices.
- ghshephard 13y agoKaiser makes use of an expert system when determining whether to schedule an appointment. I once called in with the the symptoms, "Excruciating pain in the chest, left arm just went completely numb at the same time" - and the admitting nurse (under the guidance of an expert system) determined with three quick questions that it wasn't urgent. (Any shortness of breath, are you light headed, if you press your fingernail down, how long does it take to return from white to red) So, expert systems are already here and helping make decisions...
- robg 13y agoSlow to adapt comes from many factors. We've been studying the history of medical innovation. The biggest hurdle is the training time required. We're talking a decade to get credentials. Then another decade to get experience. Those 20 years are hard work (schooling, residency, long hours, loans, meager pay). By the time they're ready to contribute, risks are not a good thing esp adding to the chance of doing harm to patients. So the status quo persists until the next generation comes along. We're meeting mental health professionals who were trained in the 60s, 70s, and 80s who proudly claim they know little about the brain. I don't blame them entirely - when they were trained we only knew about the human brain from stokes and open head trauma. To get them up to speed requires a whole new training. That's very hard when you spend all week seeing patients - that's your livelihood.
- adolph 13y agoIBM Struggles to Turn Watson Computer Into Big Business Revenue Is Far From Company's Ambitious Targets: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304887104579306881917668654?mod=djkeyword http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230488710... In 2012, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York began work on an adviser to recommend cancer treatments. Dr. Mark Kris, a Sloan-Kettering oncologist, said an early version of the Watson tool could be used on patients later this year if it passes tests. At his office, he pulled out an iPad and showed a screen from Watson that listed three potential treatments. Watson was less than 32% confident that any of them were correct. "Just like cancer, it is much more complex than we thought," Dr. Kris said.
- VladRussian2 13y agoWatson may start really outperform humans when his strength - the ability to ingest and process/correlate huge amounts of, probably with not completely understood relevance, information, like full DNA sequence of a patient, etc... - will be fully utilized, and some previously unknown to humans patterns start to emerge.
- jmount 13y agoFor specialized tasks expert systems have been better than doctors since the 1970s (Mycin, infection/antibiotic assignment). So I would guess there is some resistance.
- carbocation 13y agoYour comment implies that access to Watson is available to medical professionals right now and has been for some time. I don't think this is true, but if so, please contact me (details in my HN profile).
- macspoofing 13y agoIs there even a product to sell to medical? I thought Watson was just a proof-of-concept system. An actual product based on Watson would need to have some defined scope (i.e. only used for cancer treatments), would need some sort of FDA clearance which would probably require clinical trials. Is it there yet? Does IBM even want to take on the liability and expense of bringing it to medical? And is the market even big enough to interest IBM? Today, the "decision-support system" market is tiny.
- robg 13y agoBest part? What was living room-sized is now three pizza boxes. It's less hardware, more software. That's exciting! AWS for AI.
- lingben 13y agoI heard this as well, any idea how this was accomplished?
- robg 13y agoHonestly, look at the new MacPros. The computing power from even 10 years ago is amazing. WATSON will soon be software only for most standard servers. Looking at the SoftLayer acquisition in that light is very exciting.
- mbesto 13y agohttp://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ushn7/ibms_watson_the_computer_that_beat_humans_on/ http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1ushn7/ibms_wats... Comment 1 - Most likely it's not a full "Watson" but rather a network appliance that slots into a rack. Watson is powered by 2,880 8-core IBM POWER7 processors, which AFAIK haven't received a core bump or a die shrink since their introduction in 2011. Comment 2 - POWER7 (which came out in 2009) was replaced by POWER7+ in 2012. IBM shrunk the lithography but kept the die size the same, so they used the extra space for more cache, a crypto accelerator, a compression/decompression accelerator, and some other goodies. There were able to bump up the clock speed as well. Core for core, POWER7+ is about a 20% improvement, but you're right, no more cores per socket so there is no way they would see the kind of shrink described in the article if they kept the same amount of compute power. IBM did come out with a new blade design (Flex Systems) with denser packaging, but that combined with the faster CPU will still only get them about 2/3rd of the way there (still impressive).
- wmf 13y agoAFAIK the amount of hardware needed depends on the size of your corpus, so I would expect it to vary.
- Already__Taken 13y ago
- hooande 13y agoWatson could be described as a natural language search engine. This is no small thing. It's linguistic abilities were showcased on jeopardy, though it's wins might have had more to do with speed of processing and "buzzing in" than it did with being really smart. Watson is quite possibly the most sophisticated specific use natural language program to ever exist (as opposed to general use nlp, which is star trek level problem). That said, the approach and subsequent utility might not live up to the hype that IBM is pumping out. It's one thing to search very quickly. Being able to discover patterns that lead to new levels of understanding and predictable relationships is another thing entirely. IBM is more search vs predict in part because they only have so much data to work with. All of the medical books in the world are a drop in the bucket in terms of algorithmic understanding. Watson has mastered working with all available information. Collecting and processing massive data sets is another challenge that IBM hasn't been willing to tackle yet. IBM is billing Watson as the all singing, all dancing solution to the world's data problems. They're tackling a lot of problems in diverse areas. I hope it works out, the world needs as much help as it can get. But IBM has shifted their core mission to be consulting and I wonder if Watson's purpose will be to support that more than becoming a Super Siri type software project that could do the most good.
- taejo 13y ago> its wins might have had more to do with speed of processing and "buzzing in" than it did with being really smart. It may only be better than humans at buzzing in, but being as good as humans at natural language search, but faster and more consistently (doesn't make mistakes when tired; works just as well in Kampala as New York; can be audited when it makes mistakes) is already better than humans.
- mikeash 13y agoRegarding Watson's speed on Jeopardy, that was certainly a big advantage for it. However, consider that no matter how fast it is, a machine that "only" gets 50% of the questions right after it buzzes in (which would be an amazing accomplishment already) would lose the game horribly. That it won so solidly shows that it goes well beyond mere speed.
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- wil421 13y agoSo Siri is for consumer devices and Watson is going to be for businesses. I dont think they are going to be killing each other since they are targeting different markets.
- robg 13y agoUntil consumer-oriented businesses start building apps atop it.
- mcintyre1994 13y agoI'd like to see that happen if only to push Google to open a Google Now API. To me this sounds like Wolfram Alpha for business more than Siri or Google Now though.
- taopao 13y agoMost of Siri's Watson-style smarts are just Wolfram Alpha queries, no?
- RandallBrown 13y agoI'm not sure. I asked Siri "Did Michigan win its bowl game?" and it gave me the right answer and said "Michigan lost to Kansas state in the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl. Wolfram Alpha, with the same query, just gave me information about the state of Michigan. Bing gave me search results about Michigan Football, and Google's top results were an article about the actual bowl game. I don't have an Android phone to try Google Now.
- jonathansizz 13y agoYes, Google Now is a much bigger competitor.
- bhouston 13y agoSeems like a lot of hype still. It needs a killer app and I haven't yet seen one.
- kylemclaren 13y agoSomething like this? http://youtu.be/8lGJ0h_jAp8 http://youtu.be/8lGJ0h_jAp8
- elwell 13y agoThat doesn't look like a prototype, just cgi.
- fortepianissimo 13y agoI really don't appreciate the media's blood thirst - the slayer of this and the killer of that. Why can't we just have something that contributes in a non-zero-sum game?
- normloman 13y agoYou never had journalistic training. Journalists frame stories to satisfy criteria of "newsworthiness," a combined measure of the story's importance, urgency, and entertainment value. Just like a good novel has a dramatic conflict, journalists are taught to report on stories with conflict (which are often more interesting to read than dull, peaceful hum-drum). And if the story doesn't have conflict built-in, they make conflict by framing the story to include a conflict narrative. Journalists refer to the way they frame a story as their "angle." Anything can be news with the right angle. Real life example: in the 90s, journalists reported on the "Great Hacker War," a "virtual gang war" between two competing hacker groups, LOD & MOD. In reality, the event was a scuffle between some hackers in a chat room, which resulted in some minor hacking, name calling, and prank phone calls. But that didn't make for a great headline.
- milhous 13y agoThe headline is so absurd that I'm not reading it. But an excellent analysis.
- sheetjs 13y agoRelevant clip from the Daily Show: http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-february-4-2010/the-blogs-must-be-crazy http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-february-4-2010/the-bl...
- hipaulshi 13y agoWow. I wish they could provide an open source library. But that was probably too much to ask for. Still, this is amazing news.
- isaacpei 13y agoit was funny that just 3 days ago wallstreet journal talked about this: IBM Struggles to Turn Watson Computer Into Big Business http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304887104579306881917668654 http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230488710... It would be more convincing if Watson accomplished some real knowledge archievment such as finding a cure for a specific disease, or publish some papers enhance our understanding of some research topics ... Unix starts small, it works. Google starts small, it helps us tremendously. Haven't seen something starts as a big business plan can success greatly? even Microsoft started small ...
- ar7hur 13y agoSo far Watson for developers/business is 100% PR and 0% real. In November they announced the Watson API. Where is the API? Where is the documentation? Where are the examples? Google it and you'll get a torrent of PDF press release and incentives to call their sales team. I'm afraid Watson is just a PR stunt. Was it oversold by IBM engineers to their executives? Or by the executives to the PR team? Or by the PR team to the press? I don't know. But they lost control of it.
- Spooky23 13y agoStudents at RPI have access to it, I saw a student app using it at a hackathon awhile back. http://watson.rpi.edu/ http://watson.rpi.edu/
- kitd 13y agoAccess to the "ecosystem" (ie API) is controlled at the moment, but you can request access here: http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/getting_started.shtml http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/getting_started.s...
- scotty79 13y agoWatson in its original incarnation could be already quite useful. It could provide workers with valuable input on what their manager has in mind when he babbles incomprehensibly throwing his favorite buzzwords at random. At least 20% of full-stack programmers job is to figure out how people want the computer to behave and all we have to work with is chaos of words that flow from their mouths and fingers.
- nl 13y agoI'm currently working on an my own open source version of Watson/Siri/Google Now. (It can answer "What is the capital of Brazil" Yay!). As part of that I've been leaning as much as I can about how Watson actually works. The most useful information can be found by Googling "Deep QA" which is what IBM has dubbed their question answering pipeline. A slide deck like [2] is a good place to start if you are interested in this. [1] Yeah, I know that is kind of a crazy thing to work on. It's actually even more stupid than you may think, because I want it make it self-hostable, with the ability to keep your own data separately to the rest of the application (ie, enforcing privacy). [2] http://www.cs.hku.hk/news/2011/WatsonHongKong_talk_ppt.pdf http://www.cs.hku.hk/news/2011/WatsonHongKong_talk_ppt.pdf
- xerophtye 13y agoNot crazy at all. I have been dreaming on working on something similar even before watson was announced (though i was just a Freshmen back then). And was hellishly jealous of that team. So I can totally understand your motivations for this. Do hit me up if you'd welcome help with this. Email is in HN profile
- nl 13y agoYou have to fill in you email in the about section for it to be visible. Mine should be showing up though - feel free to get in touch.
- nathan_f77 13y agoThis is awesome. It really makes me feel like we're taking one more step into the future.
- balozi 13y agoLooks like IBM might be trying to buy good press. Plus, it's just over a week till Q4 earnings report. I bet Rometty has seen the numbers.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]