Watson restrained: IBM reveals how it deliberately holds back its AI system

IBM's Watson AI product is mostly rolled out live with machine learning halted to avoid "losing control" of its behaviour, Europe CTO Duncan Anderson has confirmed. Anderson said the idea of AI always learning and adjusting its behaviour is still something people are "a bit nervous about". "At the moment, you stop the learning before it goes live, so you don't get any surprises," Anderson told Computing at our Big Data & Analytics Summit 2016 in London. The aim, explained Anderson, is to "get a sensible kind of answer" from an AI in line with the business's expectations. He added that Watson's modular-based learning updates are now so advanced in specific areas of industry that it's now possible to sell "off the shelf" versions of the AI that can immediately get to grips with traditional tasks in a given area.