IBM is betting that research on more human-like artificial intelligence will help it turn things around.
As cheap cloud computing services erode IBM’s traditional hardware business with alarming speed, the company finds itself facing an uncertain future. If only there were some clever machine it could turn to for advice.
Appropriately enough that’s what a large part of IBM’s research division is trying to create, by building on the research effort that led to Watson, the computer that won in the game show Jeopardy! in 2011. The hope is that this effort will lead to software and hardware that can answer complex questions by looking through vast amounts of information containing subtle and disparate clues.
“We’re betting billons of dollars, and a third of this division now is working on it,” John Kelly, director of IBM Research, said of cognitive computing, a term the company uses to refer to artificial intelligence techniques related to Watson.
The stakes are looking higher by the day. IBM has delivered a string of disappointing quarters, and announced recently that it would take a multibillion-dollar hit to offload its struggling chip business.
The company’s vast research department is already big part of the turnaround plan. Earlier this year the division was reorganized to ramp up efforts related to cognitive computing. The push began with the development of the original Watson, but has expanded to include other areas of software and hardware research aimed at helping machines provide useful insights from huge quantities of often-messy data. The research efforts are far-ranging, and include software that can suggest new recipes by analyzing thousands of ingredients and popular meals, and electronic components, known as neurosynaptic chips, that have features modeled on the workings of biological brains and are more efficient at processing sensory information.
Speaking at an event held at the IBM’s Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, last week, Kelly said other parts of the company’s research division are being reorganized to increase this focus. Some materials and hardware research has either been scaled back or redeployed to support the cognitive computing effort. “The underlying physics, materials, and devices to power this next generation of [cognitive] systems is of great interest to us,” Kelly said.
But the question-and-answer software that descended from the original Watson and runs on conventional computer hardware remains the centerpiece of IBM’s cognitive crusade. It’s also key to its evolving business plan.
The hope is that the technology will be able to answer more complicated questions in all sorts of industries, including health care, financial investment, and oil discovery; and that it will help IBM build a lucrative new computer-driven consulting business. At the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, a version of Watson is helping doctors develop treatment regimens from a patient’s symptoms based on an analysis of thousands of pages of medical papers and doctors’ notes.
There is good reason for IBM’s management to hope that the technology might provide the spark for its reinvention. Watson demonstrated an unprecedented ability to find answers to very tricky human questions in vast amounts of data on everything from 1960s pop music to obscure hereditary disorders. Simultaneously, there is a growing belief that machine-learning techniques may provide powerful way to mine the rising tide of big data, with companies including Google, Facebook, and Amazon developing their own methods for hunting through vast quantities of data for useful insights....MORE
