IBM Watson Provides Self-Service AI for Developers By Darryl K. Taft Posted 2016-05-07 Print In what IBM calls "self-service AI," the company enables developers to easily tap into the power of its Watson APIs to build cognitive apps. When IBM initially launched its Watson cognitive computing platform, one of the first questions on a lot folks' minds was, "When can I tap into the power of Watson?" IBM responded by opening up Watson to developers via the Watson Developer Cloud, which offers Watson services and APIs as well as useful documentation and tutorials, starter kits and access to the Watson developer community. IBM started slow and continued to evolve its Watson strategy for developers. The company started with just a few Watson partners and offered just a handful of Watson services.

Many Watson Developer Cloud services and other cognitive software systems provide a numerical score for how confident the system is in some result. For example, the IBM Watson Retrieve and Rank service provides a Ranker confidence score. The IBM Watson Natural Language Classifier also provides a confidence score as do Watson services for language identification, speech processing, entity and relation detection, etc. Some of these confidence scores may have some meaningful interpretation as a probability (e.g., a probability that some result is "correct" or "relevant"). You cannot assume that all results with a very high confidence score are very good and all results with a very low confidence score are very bad.

KPMG will hold a series of workshops over the next few months with IBM Watson staff to work out how to use the artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to carry out this new type of audit. "No-one knows exactly what the audit of the future will look like, but you can be sure it will involve two things - bright human beings and cognitive technology," said Duncan McLennan, the firm's national managing partner of audit. "Cognitive enables greater collaboration between humans and systems - so while it's a game-changer for audit in terms of depth of analysis, it will still require insights from talented people. We're being helped, not replaced."

A recent announcement out of the company reports, "XPRIZE, the global leader in incentivized prize competitions, today announced that registration is now open and guidelines are available for the 5 million IBM Watson AI XPRIZE, a four-year global competition challenging teams to develop and demonstrate how humans can collaborate with powerful artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to tackle the world's greatest challenges. The AI competition is XPRIZE's first open challenge where teams will define their own goals and create AI applications that solve some of humanity's most pressing challenges in areas such as healthcare, education, energy & environment, global development and exploration." Marcus Shingles, CEO of XPRIZE, commented, "In the coming decade, as XPRIZE strives to achieve its impact mission through incentive competitions and crowd-sourcing, we see tremendous opportunity in this emerging generation of problem solvers to use AI to solve humanity's grandest challenges… The IBM Watson AI XPRIZE is intended to promote and progress the notion of'AI for impact' among the global bold innovator crowd, both the established community of practitioners, as well as encourage newcomers to experiment and ultimately demonstrate how AI can be used as a tool for good." The article adds, "Teams have until December 1, 2016 to register through the XPRIZE website for the four-year competition, and then will have until March 1, 2017 to submit a detailed development and testing plan for their proposed solution. There will be three subsequent rounds of selection each fall during which a panel of expert judges will choose the top 10 teams that will advance to compete at IBM Watson sponsored events where they can receive Milestone Prizes."

Artificial Intelligence is the theory and development of computer systems that normally require human intelligence. These days A.I. is also buzz word that contains any technology achieving intelligent systems. 'Cognitive' technologies -- designed to simulate human thought -- are organized into Cognitive Systems. They make use of Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing to enable humans to interact more naturally with machines, with the aim of enhancing and scaling human expertise.

In the coming decade, as X Prize strives to achieve its impact mission through incentive competitions and crowd-sourcing, we see tremendous opportunity in this emerging generation of problem solvers to use AI to solve humanitys grandest challenges," X Prize CEO Marcus Shingles said in a statement. "The IBM Watson AI X Prize is intended to promote and progress the notion of AI for impact among the global bold innovator crowd, both the established community of practitioners, as well as encourage newcomers to experiment and ultimately demonstrate how AI can be used as a tool for good.

IBM Watson joined forces with the X Prize Foundation to launch an open 5 million challenge to build an artificial intelligence app for healthcare that could also be used in other industries, including education, energy, the environment, global development or even exploration. "In the coming decade, as X Prize strives to achieve its impact mission through incentive competitions and crowd-sourcing, we see tremendous opportunity in this emerging generation of problem solvers to use AI to solve humanity's grandest challenges," X Prize CEO Marcus Shingles said in a statement. "The IBM Watson AI X Prize is intended to promote and progress the notion of'AI for impact' among the global bold innovator crowd, both the established community of practitioners, as well as encourage newcomers to experiment and ultimately demonstrate how AI can be used as a tool for good." Unlike previous X Prizes, including the Tricorder X Prize, in which companies are vying to develop a handheld medical scanner, and the original Ansari X Prize for suborbital flight, this contest allows the participants to define their own goals and to focus on solving different problems. "Rather than set a single, universal goal for all teams, this competition allows teams to define their own challenges and demonstrate their solutions, encouraging myriad problem-solving approaches," Amir Banifatemi, X Prize lead for the IBM Watson AI competition, said in a statement.

Artificial intelligence is a major player at Cannes Lions this week. And while AI is expected to transform tech within five years, Alphabet Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt assured attendees that there's little chance it will become "evil" as Hollywood films have depicted. In fact, he said, there are imminent benefits of AI. "Computer vision is now better than human vision. It means self-driving cars probably see a lot better than you, especially if you are drunk." Meanwhile, British musician and producer Brian Eno spoke about creativity and AI, defending human intelligence. "AI is not as advanced as we expected it would be," he said.

IBM has been extensively involved in almost all phases of airline information technology. Now it is moving to use the formidable question-answering capabilities of Watson and new techniques like Natural Language Processing, Cognitive Computing and Machine Learning to help pilots deal with maintenance challenges in flight, according to Brad Clossen, senior managing consultant. "We already help customer service agents, flight attendants, pilots and technical staff," the IBM executive says. "The next step is cognitive computing." The remarkable Watson can understand questions phrased in natural human language; it does not require input to adhere to rigid computer grammar.

Registration has just opened up for an all new US 5 million XPrize, this time focusing on getting humans collaborating better with artificial intelligence to solve major global issues. Unlike previous competitions, this XPrize, sponsored by IBM's Watson division, doesn't feature a set of pre-determined goals, but instead challenges teams to come up with their own. You might be familiar with XPrize from its ongoing Google Lunar effort, which is seeing small teams from around the world compete to successfully land a robot on the Moon. It's a seriously ambitious project, and one that has seen rivals team up in the hope of winning out against the competition. This new project is totally different to the Lunar XPrize, but it's no less ambitious.