Picture credit: ChrisDag/Flickr
IBM has announced that its supercomputer Watson is being rolled out in a variety of locations, including Australia, Thailand, and Spain.
The global expansion has come about after the IBM Watson Group was formed in January. IBM also announced various collaborations with companies, as well as startups creating apps that are powered by Watson.
Watson is being trialled in Spain with CaixaBank, to develop a cognitive system to teach Watson Spanish. Similarly, ANZ Global Wealth is working with Watson to analyse and observe the types of questions coming from both customers and financial advisors, to offer an improved advice process.
Watson’s credentials in healthcare will also be tested. The supercomputer is being deployed in Bumrungrad International Hospital in Thailand, to improve the quality of cancer care, as well as at Metropolitan Health in South Africa, to provide personalised, outcome-based health services. The latter will be the first commercial application of Watson on the African continent.
Deakin University in Australia is also trialling Watson to develop an online student engagement advisor, developing and fitting profiles for the university’s 50,000 students, assisting them from where certain buildings in the university are to which careers they should pursue.
Evidently, it’s an emphasis on improving the client and improving Watson’s capabilities. One of the key tenets to Watson is that it continually learns from its mistakes.
CloudTech was treated to a demonstration of Watson Analytics last month, and found some interesting insights. Users have three ways of starting their project; either starting with a question, starting from a use case, or starting from data itself.
Ask Watson Analytics a question – in the case of the demo, ‘why do people purchase?’ – and it spits out data based on drivers, not based as much on figures. As Watson Analytics is based in the cloud, it gives great flexibility in adding use cases.
Read more: Watson Analytics: How it makes sales and marketing’s jobs easier