8 ms·

IBM Sees Broader Role for Watson in Aiding Research

35 points by codelion 12y ago

digbata 12y ago
What a terrible, terrible article. Why is this blog-able information, there is nothing substantial here. Everything is future possibilities and no concrete details. There have been many people working on similar projects to this in academia and otherwise. "Identifying the proteins that modify p53" is incredibly easy with the database information in Medline and doesn't require a "Watson" to do so. That being said, finding connections within medical literature could be interesting, but only if it is combined with other public databases that describe protein interactions and gene information. This blog post could be much more detailed in this sense.
fiatmoney 12y ago
I'm reaaaally getting tired of IBM's PR department plastering Watson press releases all over the place in the guise of "news". Especially when "Watson" is more of a brand name, and there's next to no evidence that whatever "it" is is actually better or more cost-effective than off-the-shelf techniques (let alone the frontier of research) at any particular machine learning application. "Ford sees broader role for Taurus in aiding transportation networks of the future!" Of course they do.
- ar7hur 12y ago
  +1. IBM must regain control over their PR people, speak less and do more, or they will lose any credibility with developers.
  - kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
    Maybe Watson's inference engine could be reworked into an automated PR generator and put them out of a job.
    - zrail 12y ago
      Maybe it already has...
- Houshalter 12y ago
  Watson may be overhyped, but it isn't a replacement for off the shelf machine learning algorithms. Watson is more like a search engine that takes advantage of a lot of natural language processing. It is for answering questions in natural language and searching through huge amounts of literature automatically.
  - fiatmoney 12y ago
    So, like Solr? I don't mean to be glib; and I do understand that "answering natural language questions" is distinct from "search engine". But I have the feeling that it's a capability distribution that is much more impressive in the context of a full-court IBM sales pitch to an executive who saw it on Jeopardy once and wants to get in on this machine learning thing that everyone's talking about, than as a tool used by experts to do a task or set of tasks better. Their shameless press release marketing isn't exactly dispelling that notion.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
jostmey 12y ago
Nice Try.... As someone who works in the biological sciences and who has played around with various machine learning algorithms (ann, k-nn) this sounds like an advertising gimmick. I am all for using computers to process and analyze data, but frankly machine learning has not reached a point yet where algorithms can "identify" new hypotheses by sifting through the scientific literature.
- hiddencost 12y ago
  sorry, but, ... playing with KNN/ANN and claiming insight into ML is like playing with a nerf gun and claiming knowledge of advanced tactics.
biomimic 12y ago
Other companies focused on genes related to extending human life span are Google's Calico http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calico_(company) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calico_(company) and http://genopharmix.com http://genopharmix.com and http://www.humanlongevity.com/ http://www.humanlongevity.com/
mark_l_watson 12y ago
I am very interested in the IBM Watson platform but so far I am still on the waiting list for being considered for early access. Hint to IBM: at least make all documentation, example code, etc. available for perusal.
- pesenti 12y ago
  It will happen on October 7th.
  - mark_l_watson 12y ago
    Thanks for the information. I put October 7 on my calendar as a reminder.
pesenti 12y ago
The article is scarce in details but this is a real product with real applications. The software uses NLP and ML techniques to sift through large amount of scientific documents, i.e., patents or publications, and extracts relevant entities, e.g., proteins, drugs, genes and their relationships, e.g., how a protein acts on a gene, and lets the user visualize all this and query it using natural language. I can give more details if anybody is curious. (Disclaimer: I work for Watson)
- pinkyand 12y ago
  It sound very impressive and i'm very curious. A few questions: 1. It feels a lot like literature-based-discovery. Is it ? if so , how is watson better than current literature based discovery methods that did create some scientific hypothesis AFAIK? If not please share more details(if you can of course) about how it reaches hypothesis). 2. Does it work well in non biological literature ? Are there any examples ?
  - pesenti 12y ago
    1. I am not super familiar with the space (I am not responsible for this specific product) so I may not answer your question exactly. The discovery product is an interactive tool more than a static tool generating hypothesis. It lets you search, navigate, visualize, query in natural language the literature and the extracted entities/relationships. It uses a lot of pretty advanced tech to do that: * State-of-the-art statistical annotators * Some deep domain knowledge understanding of the entities themselves (e.g., how chemical entities are composed) * Some nifty visualizations * Many component from the Jeopardy stack (you can read the Jeopardy papers for more insights) - deep question parsing, candidate generation techniques, scorers, etc. * Down the line it'll integrate more reasoning techniques along the lines of http://www.research.ibm.com/cognitive-computing/watson/watsonpaths.shtml http://www.research.ibm.com/cognitive-computing/watson/watso... 2. Our first version was focused on life sciences and intelligence, we are expanding it to finance, law, and education.
    - pinkyand 12y ago
      Thanks you!
pseudometa 12y ago
As awesome as it was watching it play Jeopardy, it feel like that is all it has ever done. So many press releases boast about the areas it could improve, however the real-life tangibles seem disparate at best. It would be great if the PR department touted its actual, real-life, in-the-field results rather than hypotheticals. Next up, Watson considered for role in improving food production!

35 points by codelion 12y ago

What a terrible, terrible article. Why is this blog-able information, there is nothing substantial here. Everything is future possibilities and no concrete details. There have been many people working on similar projects to this in academia and otherwise. "Identifying the proteins that modify p53" is incredibly easy with the database information in Medline and doesn't require a "Watson" to do so. That being said, finding connections within medical literature could be interesting, but only if it is combined with other public databases that describe protein interactions and gene information. This blog post could be much more detailed in this sense.

fiatmoney 12y ago

I'm reaaaally getting tired of IBM's PR department plastering Watson press releases all over the place in the guise of "news". Especially when "Watson" is more of a brand name, and there's next to no evidence that whatever "it" is is actually better or more cost-effective than off-the-shelf techniques (let alone the frontier of research) at any particular machine learning application. "Ford sees broader role for Taurus in aiding transportation networks of the future!" Of course they do.

ar7hur 12y ago
+1. IBM must regain control over their PR people, speak less and do more, or they will lose any credibility with developers.
- kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
  Maybe Watson's inference engine could be reworked into an automated PR generator and put them out of a job.
  - zrail 12y ago
    Maybe it already has...
Houshalter 12y ago
Watson may be overhyped, but it isn't a replacement for off the shelf machine learning algorithms. Watson is more like a search engine that takes advantage of a lot of natural language processing. It is for answering questions in natural language and searching through huge amounts of literature automatically.
- fiatmoney 12y ago
  So, like Solr? I don't mean to be glib; and I do understand that "answering natural language questions" is distinct from "search engine". But I have the feeling that it's a capability distribution that is much more impressive in the context of a full-court IBM sales pitch to an executive who saw it on Jeopardy once and wants to get in on this machine learning thing that everyone's talking about, than as a tool used by experts to do a task or set of tasks better. Their shameless press release marketing isn't exactly dispelling that notion.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]

jostmey 12y ago

Nice Try.... As someone who works in the biological sciences and who has played around with various machine learning algorithms (ann, k-nn) this sounds like an advertising gimmick. I am all for using computers to process and analyze data, but frankly machine learning has not reached a point yet where algorithms can "identify" new hypotheses by sifting through the scientific literature.

hiddencost 12y ago
sorry, but, ... playing with KNN/ANN and claiming insight into ML is like playing with a nerf gun and claiming knowledge of advanced tactics.

biomimic 12y ago

Other companies focused on genes related to extending human life span are Google's Calico http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calico_(company) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calico_(company) and http://genopharmix.com http://genopharmix.com and http://www.humanlongevity.com/ http://www.humanlongevity.com/

mark_l_watson 12y ago

I am very interested in the IBM Watson platform but so far I am still on the waiting list for being considered for early access. Hint to IBM: at least make all documentation, example code, etc. available for perusal.

pesenti 12y ago
It will happen on October 7th.
- mark_l_watson 12y ago
  Thanks for the information. I put October 7 on my calendar as a reminder.

pesenti 12y ago

The article is scarce in details but this is a real product with real applications. The software uses NLP and ML techniques to sift through large amount of scientific documents, i.e., patents or publications, and extracts relevant entities, e.g., proteins, drugs, genes and their relationships, e.g., how a protein acts on a gene, and lets the user visualize all this and query it using natural language. I can give more details if anybody is curious. (Disclaimer: I work for Watson)

pinkyand 12y ago
It sound very impressive and i'm very curious. A few questions: 1. It feels a lot like literature-based-discovery. Is it ? if so , how is watson better than current literature based discovery methods that did create some scientific hypothesis AFAIK? If not please share more details(if you can of course) about how it reaches hypothesis). 2. Does it work well in non biological literature ? Are there any examples ?
- pesenti 12y ago
  1. I am not super familiar with the space (I am not responsible for this specific product) so I may not answer your question exactly. The discovery product is an interactive tool more than a static tool generating hypothesis. It lets you search, navigate, visualize, query in natural language the literature and the extracted entities/relationships. It uses a lot of pretty advanced tech to do that: * State-of-the-art statistical annotators * Some deep domain knowledge understanding of the entities themselves (e.g., how chemical entities are composed) * Some nifty visualizations * Many component from the Jeopardy stack (you can read the Jeopardy papers for more insights) - deep question parsing, candidate generation techniques, scorers, etc. * Down the line it'll integrate more reasoning techniques along the lines of http://www.research.ibm.com/cognitive-computing/watson/watsonpaths.shtml http://www.research.ibm.com/cognitive-computing/watson/watso... 2. Our first version was focused on life sciences and intelligence, we are expanding it to finance, law, and education.
  - pinkyand 12y ago
    Thanks you!

pseudometa 12y ago

As awesome as it was watching it play Jeopardy, it feel like that is all it has ever done. So many press releases boast about the areas it could improve, however the real-life tangibles seem disparate at best. It would be great if the PR department touted its actual, real-life, in-the-field results rather than hypotheticals. Next up, Watson considered for role in improving food production!