For the last three years, I.B.M. scientists have been developing what they expect will be the world’s most advanced “question answering” machine, able to understand a question posed in everyday human elocution — “natural language,” as computer scientists call it — and respond with a precise, factual answer.
The producers of “Jeopardy!” have agreed to pit Watson against some of the game’s best former players as early as this fall.
“I want to create a medical version of this,” [John Kelly] adds. “A Watson M.D., if you will.” He imagines a hospital feeding Watson every new medical paper in existence, then having it answer questions during split-second emergency-room crises. “The problem right now is the procedures, the new procedures, the new medicines, the new capability is being generated faster than physicians can absorb on the front lines and it can be deployed.” He also envisions using Watson to produce virtual call centers, where the computer would talk directly to the customer and generally be the first line of defense, because, “as you’ve seen, this thing can answer a question faster and more accurately than most human beings.” “I want to create something that I can take into every other retail industry, in the transportation industry, you name it, the banking industry,” Kelly goes on to say. “Any place where time is critical and you need to get advanced state-of-the-art information to the front of decision-makers. Computers need to go from just being back-office calculating machines to improving the intelligence of people making decisions.” At first, a Watson system could cost several million dollars, because it needs to run on at least one $1 million I.B.M. server. But Kelly predicts that within 10 years an artificial brain like Watson could run on a much cheaper server, affordable by any small firm, and a few years after that, on a laptop.
For much more, see What Is I.B.M.'s Watson? by Clive Thompson, June 14, 2010, at nytimes.com.
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