IBM is making a multi-billion bet on Watson Artificial Intelligence for a Siri for Science and Business

This is IBM attempting to use enterprise artificial intelligence to accelerate technology in science, medicine and business. If they succeed this could be the first real artificial intelligence acceleration of technological development and they are attempting to enhance the productivity of science and business. It is a huge lift that is being attempted and it would not be a fast iteration of improvement. It is not like the vision of vastly greater than human level artificial intelligence setting off an explosion of intelligence.

IBM unveiled three new Watson services delivered over the cloud.

1) Watson Discovery Advisor, is designed to accelerate and strengthen research and development projects in industries such as pharmaceutical, publishing and biotechnology.

2) Watson Analytics, delivers visualized Big Data insights, based on questions posed in natural language by any business user.

3) IBM Watson Explorer, helps users across an enterprise uncover and share data-driven insights more easily, while empowering organizations launch Big Data initiatives faster.

The services are being developed and will be offered by the new IBM Watson Group, announced today at an event in New York City. The Watson Group will accelerate a new class of cognitive computing services, software and apps into the marketplace that analyze, improve by learning, and discover answers and insights to complex questions from massive amounts of disparate data.

IBM is investing $1 billion into the Watson Business Group and $100 million in venture capital earmarks toward new Watson apps, and a shiny new Watson headquarters in New York’s East Village neighborhood.

IBM wants to transform Watson into a Siri for business. The platform is designed for users to ask Watson questions, with Watson giving answers–such as medical diagnoses for hard-to-diagnose diseases, or the likely outcome of business decisions–on the spot.

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