IBM Watson
In plain wordsAn IBM question-answering computer that beat two champions of the US quiz show Jeopardy! in 2011. IBM then sold business AI products under the Watson name, many of which disappointed.
IBM's question answeringquestion answering, n.: Systems that reply to people's questions with the right answer, whether by finding it in a passage they are given, searching a database or the web, or drawing on what they already know. system that beat the Jeopardy! champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter in a two-game televised match broadcast in February 2011; it came out of IBM Research's DeepQA project under David Ferrucci. For each clue, Watson analyzed the wording, generated hundreds of candidate answers by searching some 200 million pages of locally stored text (it was not connected to the internet), scored each candidate with many independent evidence-scoring algorithms, and combined the scores with machine learningmachine learning, n.: A way of building software that learns from examples instead of following rules written by a programmer. Shown thousands of labeled photos, for instance, a program can learn to recognize cats. into a confidence estimate that decided whether to buzz in. It ran on 90 IBM Power 750 servers. IBM then applied the Watson brand to a wide range of commercial products, notably Watson Health and Watson for Oncology; several prominent health projects were cut back or abandoned amid criticism of overpromising, and IBM sold most Watson Health assets in 2022.
IBM Watson's Jeopardy! win was a feat of combining many statistical components, not of a single model.
Origin
The DeepQA project began around 2006–2007 and was named after IBM's founder, Thomas J. Watson. IBM kept the name for watsonx, its generative-AI platform launched in 2023.
Usage note
Watson's commercial history is often cited as a cautionary tale about AI hypeAI hype, n.: Exaggerated claims about what AI can do or will soon do, made to attract money, attention or customers, which can mislead the public and policymakers. and the gap between a showcase victory and real-world deployment. See cognitive computingcognitive computing, n.: A label, promoted heavily by IBM in the 2010s, for computer systems that learn, reason and interact with people in humanlike ways. It was largely a marketing term and has given way to 'AI'..
Related
- cognitive computingcognitive computing, n.: A label, promoted heavily by IBM in the 2010s, for computer systems that learn, reason and interact with people in humanlike ways. It was largely a marketing term and has given way to 'AI'.
- question answeringquestion answering, n.: Systems that reply to people's questions with the right answer, whether by finding it in a passage they are given, searching a database or the web, or drawing on what they already know.
- Deep BlueDeep Blue, prop. n.: IBM's chess computer that beat world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, the first time a machine defeated a reigning world champion in a match under standard tournament conditions.
- AI hypeAI hype, n.: Exaggerated claims about what AI can do or will soon do, made to attract money, attention or customers, which can mislead the public and policymakers.
- expert systemexpert system, n.: A program that stores a human specialist's know-how as many if–then rules and uses them to give advice or make decisions in a narrow field, such as diagnosing infections or configuring computers.
Sources
- Ferrucci, D. et al. (2010). Building Watson: An Overview of the DeepQA Project. AI Magazine 31(3), 59–79.
Mentioned in
Deep BlueDeep Blue, prop. n.: IBM's chess computer that beat world champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, the first time a machine defeated a reigning world champion in a match under standard tournament conditions., question answeringquestion answering, n.: Systems that reply to people's questions with the right answer, whether by finding it in a passage they are given, searching a database or the web, or drawing on what they already know., cognitive computingcognitive computing, n.: A label, promoted heavily by IBM in the 2010s, for computer systems that learn, reason and interact with people in humanlike ways. It was largely a marketing term and has given way to 'AI'., Gerald TesauroGerald Tesauro, prop. n.: An American IBM researcher whose program TD-Gammon learned backgammon purely by playing against itself and by the early 1990s rivaled the best human players, a landmark for machines that learn by trial and error., IBM ResearchIBM Research, prop. n.: The research division of the computer company IBM, behind landmark AI systems such as the chess champion Deep Blue and the quiz-show winner Watson.