IBM making smartphone version of Watson

Sarah Frier:

International Business Machines researchers spent four years developing Watson, the computer smart enough to beat the champions of the quiz show "Jeopardy!" Now they're trying to figure out how to get those capabilities into the phone in your pocket.

Bernie Meyerson, IBM vice president of innovation, envisions a voice-activated Watson that answers questions, like a supercharged version of Apple's Siri personal assistant. A farmer could stand in a field and ask his phone, "When should I plant my corn?" He would get a reply in seconds, based on location data, historical trends and scientific studies.

Finding additional uses for Watson is part of IBM's plan to tap new markets and boost revenue from business analytics to $16 billion by 2015. After mastering history and pop culture for its "Jeopardy!" appearance, the system is crunching financial information for Citigroup Inc. and cancer data for WellPoint Inc. The next version, dubbed Watson 2.0, would be energy-efficient enough to work on smartphones and tablets.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at September 8, 2012 1:04 AM
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