Earlier quoted context omitted.
"helps with cancer research and patient care." What does that mean? I only hear good sounding phrases but nobody ever gives me any detail.
What kind of details? Like exactly what it's doing?
Yes, what does it do?
Ask HN: Is anybody doing something productive with IBM Watson or is it just BS?
21–30 of 52 posts
Re: Ask HN: Is anybody doing something productive with IBM Watson or is it just BS?
#22Yeah. People are using it. -- For starters, Watson has taken residence at three of the top cancers hospitals in the US -- Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the Mayo Clinic -- where it helps with cancer research and patient care. -- In Australia, the company ANZ Global Wealth is focused on the latter. The company uses the Watson Engagement Advisor Tool, an NLP S…
"helps with cancer research"
Sure... Show us a single publication.
Re: Ask HN: Is anybody doing something productive with IBM Watson or is it just BS?
#23This should answer your questions: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/dced8150-b300-11e5-8358-9a82b43f6b...
Tldr: mostly hype. The "solve cancer" claims haven't worked out. Now there are lots of big data/machine learning APIs being branded as "Watson" and some are quite good.
Re: Ask HN: Is anybody doing something productive with IBM Watson or is it just BS?
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
What kind of details? Like exactly what it's doing?
Yes, what does it do?
Like, what are the things which it does?
:-) I 100% know where you are coming from in this post. All I ever see are ads oriented at PHB types, shown in PHB-type venues (airport corridors, tennis tournaments).
Re: Ask HN: Is anybody doing something productive with IBM Watson or is it just BS?
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
"helps with cancer research and patient care." What does that mean? I only hear good sounding phrases but nobody ever gives me any detail.
What kind of details? Like exactly what it's doing?
In terms of some of the cancer stuff, this can explain it way better than I can.
"But it can take weeks to identify drugs targeting cancer-causing mutations. Watson can do it in minutes and has in its database the findings of scientific papers and clinical trials on particular cancers and potential therapies."
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-ibms-watson-to-guide-cancer...
Re: Ask HN: Is anybody doing something productive with IBM Watson or is it just BS?
#26Yeah. People are using it. -- For starters, Watson has taken residence at three of the top cancers hospitals in the US -- Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, and the Mayo Clinic -- where it helps with cancer research and patient care. -- In Australia, the company ANZ Global Wealth is focused on the latter. The company uses the Watson Engagement Advisor Tool, an NLP S…
"helps with cancer research" Sure... Show us a single publication.
Okay, here's two, then I gotta get off this thread and get back to work:
http://www.businessinsider.com/r-ibms-watson-to-guide-cancer...
https://www.mskcc.org/about/innovative-collaborations/watson...
Re: Ask HN: Is anybody doing something productive with IBM Watson or is it just BS?
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
"helps with cancer research and patient care." What does that mean? I only hear good sounding phrases but nobody ever gives me any detail.
What kind of details? Like exactly what it's doing?
I think that is what the above poster is asking and the root of the original inquiry. Most press and IBM originated information about Watson reads like vague sales collateral or PR puff. The first link I get on google when I type in "watson" is titled "IBM Watson - The platform for cognitive business" [1] which is pretty meaningless. I click "What is Watson?" and get this page [2] which says "IBM Watson is a technology platform that uses natural language processing and machine learning to reveal insights from large amounts of unstructured data" which is great but that could describe anything from Siri to Google to Yelp to Microsoft Word and Excel.
The above post saying "it helps with cancer research and patient care" is the perfect example of this. Yeah it sounds good, but what is it doing? Keeping patients warm? Writing publications for researchers? Churning through raw experimental data? Rationing healthcare (er, making treatment decisions) with sophisticated mathematics? Generating a quick summary of new research papers for treaters? I have no idea..
It may be super cool technology, but IBM has done an impressive job of completely obfuscating its nature and capabilities with sales speak gobbledygook.
[1] http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/
[2] http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/what-is-wat...
Re: Ask HN: Is anybody doing something productive with IBM Watson or is it just BS?
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
What kind of details? Like exactly what it's doing?
Yes, what does it do?
http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/developercl...
the 'learn more' part for each service should tell you more about what each service does.
hope this helps. it would take me a long time and a lot of copying and pasting to relay all the same stuff.
Re: Ask HN: Is anybody doing something productive with IBM Watson or is it just BS?
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
"helps with cancer research" Sure... Show us a single publication.
Okay, here's two, then I gotta get off this thread and get back to work: http://www.businessinsider.com/r-ibms-watson-to-guide-cancer... https://www.mskcc.org/about/innovative-collaborations/watson...
You seem to be working against your own argument.
1) Business Insider is at best, simply not research journal, nor is it specifying results.
2) The medical center publication first statement says "A team of physicians and analysts at Memorial Sloan Kettering has been “training” IBM Watson for more than a year..."
Seems like like something productive would be going the other way....
Re: Ask HN: Is anybody doing something productive with IBM Watson or is it just BS?
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
"helps with cancer research and patient care." What does that mean? I only hear good sounding phrases but nobody ever gives me any detail.
What kind of details? Like exactly what it's doing?
My understanding is that Watson basically acts as a cloud machine learning platform and people can build on it as they see fit. In that sense, Watson is basically the "brand" of IBM's machine learning offerings, no matter how singular the advertising makes it sound (i.e. the ads make it sound like a singular AI platform).
Can you explain what differentiates it from Amazon Machine Learning, Microsoft Azure Machine Learning, etc?