It has been quite a while since we have heard the name “Watson” in association with IBM. I am sure that for most of you, the last time that you heard of IBM’s Watson was his debut on Jeopardy!; however, Watson has been very busy lately. “He” has been working with Citigroup to analyze company data, actively learning the Urban Dictionary and now providing its cloud development platform to third-party businesses.

According to ComputerWorld, the computing giant IBM will soon be offering access to Watson’s super-computing abilities to businesses in the hope that they will be creating more artificial-intelligence-based applications for their products and services. Watson’s “cognitive learning” talents will be utilized to help build these applications.

Rob High, IBM’s CTO of Watson, stated the following in an interview with ComputerWorld:

“We’ve been developing, evolving and maturing the technology. It’s stable and mature enough to support an ecosystem now. We’ve become convinced there’s something very special here and we shouldn’t be holding it back.”

With its “cognitive learning” capabilities, Watson has been very beneficial and involved within the health care sector since his debut on Jeopardy! High elaborates “Cognitive systems are different in that they have the ability to simulate human behavior. For the most part humans have had to adapt to the computer. As we get into cognitive systems we open up the aperture to the computer adapting to the human.”

With Watson’s cloud-computing options offered to businesses, IBM is offering the following tools:

• Development Toolkit
• Access to Watson’s API (Application Programming Interface)
• Educational Materials/Documentation
• Application Marketplace

ComputerWorld states that some of the details for the Watson cloud service have yet to be finalized.

[Image: YouTube]