IBM Watson to Go from Jeopardy Champ to Telemarketing!? (DEBUNKED)
July 7th, 2011
[Update: Scott Brooks, IBM Research VP of Marketing and Communications has written to us to say that this is absolutely not the case, and that there are no plans to use Watson for telemarketing. See Scott's comment below.]
If you follow the tech world or just like Jeopardy, one of the coolest things to happen to that long running game show in a long time was when IBM’s Watson computer came to the show to challenge the human champions Ken Jennings and that other dude that nobody can remember. Watson cleaned up although there were reports that the computer crashed during taping. Those reports were later claimed to be false.
Now that Watson’s days on TV are over, IBM is looking for new jobs for the supercomputer. IBM used Jeopardy as a way to show how well the Watson line of supercomputers responds to naturally spoken human questions. The computer did so well that IBM sees a future for Watson in jobs like telemarketing and sales calls. Watson could be used to call us like a human salesperson and then answer questions like a human would. I wonder if Watson would take “not interested” as an answer.
Watson also has uses in e-commerce and tech support where it could answer questions for people having problems or wanting more details on a product. Interestingly, one of the first uses for Watson may be at IBM helping sell itself. That makes Watson sort of a pimp and the pimped rolled into one.
[via ExtremeTech]
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Categories: Computing Future Tech Technology
Tags: ibm supercomputer watson
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How do I sign up for the “Do Not Watson” list?
Shane,
Since you published this story largely based on the reporting of ExtremeTech, I hope you will allow me to set the record straight for your readers. I posted the following on the ExtremeTech site below it’s original story.
The plain fact is that IBM has no plans for using Watson as a telemarketer.
This was my response to ExtremeTech:
__________________________________________________________
It’s unfortunate that you chose to write this story without calling IBM, the inventor of Watson, to confirm even the most basic of facts on how Watson works or our plans to commercialize it. Had you done that, you still would be free to disagree, but at least it would be a news story, not merely conjecture that you pass off as some kind of news or analysis.
For example, we would have told you that Watson was optimized for Jeopardy, which requires covering an incredibly broad domain of knowledge (no subjects are off base) and sub-three second response time. For a commercial application — healthcare, for example — Watson wouldn’t have to be able to name which of the Great Lakes is furthest west, what direction to look in to see the wainscoting, or what team won the 1966 World Series. Acceptable response time might be minutes or hours depending on the application. Based on the workload, a system would be configured to meet client requirements. So the amount of hardware we used for Jeopardy has no bearing on a hypothetical system configured for a business.
The article says that Watson is fundamentally a huge search engine. Had you called us we would have explained that Watson is not a huge search engine. When Watson gets a question (or a Jeopardy clue) it generates hundreds or thousands of potential answers and then statistically determines which answer has the highest likelihood of being correct. It answers many questions that could not be answered by traditional search engines. For example, in the category Edible Rhyme Time the clue was “A long winded argument delivered by a frothy pie topping.” Watson correctly answered “Meringue Harangue.” You’ll notice that Watson even switched the order to move the modifier ahead of the word being modified, as is the general rule in English. Try that on a search engine.
In commercializing Watson we have been clear from the start that we see Watson as a human aid, not a humanoid. We are planning for Watson to be used at complex tasks — such as healthcare — where Watson helps a person or group sift through mountains of data and provide decision support. Your headline about replacing salespeople and telemarketers may be attention-getting, but had you called us, we would have told you it’s not in our plans.
One big advantage with Watson. If somehow we could ask it to research the facts for a story like this: it would not be lazy.
Scott Brooks
Vice President
Marketing and Communications
IBM Research
Scott: Thanks for the clarification. I appreciate your candor and we look forward to seeing what Watson is up to next.