Top Tech 2013 Day 1: Watson
At Prokalkeo, we track a lot of tech. We don’t post about it as much as we would like, because we’re busy building tools to track it and doing the actual evaluation. But we do a lot of tracking.
This year, we’re going to start a new tradition in honor of the sheer number of amazing advancements that are happening, and we’re going to post a cool new technology or fundamental advance that happened over the course of the previous year every day. Then, leading up to New Years, we’ll post the coolest stuff of the end of the year.
Check back every day for another awesome advancement from 2013.
A personal favorite technology is Watson. We’re starting with Watson because it feels right-as it develops, it and other technologies like it will speed up the rate new discoveries are made-and they’are already coming fast enough. I got to see and talk to the developers of everyone’s favorite Jeopardy champion at my alma mater a couple years ago, and I’ve been entranced since. The implications of what a natural language analytics engine can do are incredible, and I’ve been impressed with just how far IBM is pushing it.
In November, IBM announced that they would be opening the Watson API to developers and partners. Already working with a variety of medical institutes and online marketplaces, this means that a number of other industries might benefit-legal, financial, even engineering.
Current Watson partners and clients include:
- Fluid, Inc.
- MD Buyline
- Welltok
- Healthline
- Elance
- Sloan Kettering
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
- Citi
- Scripps Research
Next year, IBM will be opening the Watson Developer Cloud, linked at the bottom of the article. IBM has stated that future goals of Watson ‘2.0’ and ‘3.0’ include the ability to take in audio, visual, and video data, followed by the ability to ‘converse’ with users and make inferential jumps.
If you want to sign up, you can sign up at http://www-03.ibm.com/innovation/us/watson/getting_started.shtml.