IBM Watson Does Your Taxes: Question Answering Machine versus Expert System

Summary: IBM's Watson now to do your taxes at H&R Block? This is a good opportunity to explore the differences between Question Answering Machines (Watson) and Expert Systems. If you were paying attention during the Super Bowl you saw something unprecedented, an advertisement aimed at data scientists. It was the H&R Block announcement that it was rolling out IBM's Watson to all 80,000 of its tax preparers. So far we've seen Watson deployed primarily on more complex and obscure data like chemical reactions, cancer diagnoses, and environmental engineering.