John E. Kelly III, Senior Vice President, IBM
By John E. Kelly III
When the original Watson won on the TV quiz show Jeopardy in 2011, it was one computer tucked away in a room at IBM Research. Now it’s in our cloud, available anywhere.
Back then, Watson consisted of a single software application powered by five core technologies. Today, it includes 28 cognitive services. Each represents a different mode of thinking–visual recognition, personality insights, relationship extraction and tradeoff analytics, to name a few. And more are on the way…
Read the full story on IBM’s new THINK blog.
Deepak Advani, General Manager, IBM Commerce
By Deepak Advani
What is it that separates homo sapiens from our fellow animals? Psychologists, anthropologists, artists, zoologists and many other “ists” have proposed many different ideas, but as they have not reached a consensus, I feel free to offer my own opinion: it is invention that sets humans apart.
“Language” is a popular proposal yet what is human language (not the capacity for language, but language itself) if not an invention? Other animals use tools, but it is humans alone who relentlessly imagine, improvise, tinker and create a seemingly infinite number of things to help us with every aspect of our lives. Continue Reading »
Dario Gil, VP, Science & Technology, IBM Research
By Dario Gil
IBM Research scientists launched the nanotechnology revolution when they designed the scanning-tunneling microscope in 1981, and our researchers have achieved numerous nanotech breakthroughs since then–including being the first people in the world to move single atoms.
Now comes an advance that delivers on the promise of nanotechnology–potentially extending the life of Moore’s Law by enabling major performance improvements over today’s conventional chip technology.
A team at our Yorktown, New York, lab overcame one of the most daunting challenges facing the chip industry by demonstrating the first carbon nanotube transistors that don’t suffer from reduced performance as they’re shrunk to smaller dimensions. Read about their invention in the Oct. 2 edition of Science.
The University of Michigan’s Aurum 2
By Steve Hamm
IBM Chief Storyteller
In the solar energy realm, nothing beats the drama and fun of the biennial Bridgestone World Solar Challenge, an 1800-mile race in solar-powered cars across the Australian outback. Teams from dozens of universities around the world compete for global bragging rights–combining precision teamwork with advances in software, electronics, materials and aerodynamic design.
For this year’s race, which will take place October 18 to 25, there’s an exciting new technology in play: cognitive computing. IBM Research scientists are collaborating with the University of Michigan’s solar car team to provide solar forecasting technology they hope will give the team’s car, Aurum, a decisive edge.
Casey Dugan, Software Engineer, IBM Research
By Casey Dugan
“We can give you loads of data.”
That’s what I said to IBM Senior Vice President of Solutions Portfolio and Research, John Kelly, III, when he asked why we installed a little “selfie” station in the lobby of the IBM Research Lab in Cambridge, Mass.
I installed the simple system in April of 2014 by connecting a web cam to a touchscreen monitor, all just to find out what people would do with it.
The idea came about when our team visited the Cognitive Environments lab in Yorktown Heights (home of IBM’s Thomas J Watson Research Center). We watched these amazing immersive environment demos for emergency planning and other real-world scenarios. So, we wondered, “what could we do in our lab?” Continue Reading »
Brian Book, President, Book Zurman, Inc.
A Gulf War veteran, Brian Book is the president of Book Zurman, Inc., a Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) that has partnered with IBM. Brian is leading a team that is a finalist in the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Care Coordination Challenge for Improved Outcomes. Without revealing too much about the team’s final submission due on Nov. 23, Brian sat down with Smarter Planet to discuss the role of cognitive and cloud. Below is a summary of that conversation.
Smarter Plant: What is the VA’s Care Coordination Challenge?
Brian Book: Veterans receiving care interact with facilities inside and outside of the VA often involving multiple specialists, clinicians and other personnel. Establishing a single treatment plan across all these providers has proven to be an elusive challenge instant loans, but one the VA views as critical to enabling better treatment plans and outcomes. The VA is seeking potential solutions from industry, researchers, developers and others to “create algorithms (methods, processes and/or tools) for identifying redundancies, gaps, conflicts, and interactions among care-plan items and other data.” After the first competitive round, our team is one of five finalists. Continue Reading »
Erich Clementi, Chairman and SVP IBM Europe
By Erich Clementi
At a recent roundtable in Brussels on the Digital Transformation of Industry, hosted by Gunther Oettinger, EU Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society, I joined other European business leaders to discuss ways to energize the digital transformation of Europe’s industrial sector. Across Europe, digitalization raises the potential for increasing flexibility, efficiency, productivity, competitiveness –- all helping to create jobs and growth.
One theme that drew much interest was IBM’s concept of a public digital framework and the role it could play in the Digital Transformation of Industry. Such a framework would ensure that all players in Europe’s industrial base have access to the latest game-changing technologies, ideas and services. Continue Reading »
Simeon Piasecki, Director of Explorium, a Fung Group laboratory in Shanghai
By Simeon Piasecki
Retailers the world over are grappling with how to attract today’s digitally savvy consumers and turn them in to repeat customers. Yet, I would argue that this is nowhere more keenly felt than in China.
Chinese consumers are setting shopping trends globally, especially with their avid use of digital devices and social media. They are much more likely than American or European consumers to interact with brands through social media, according to BCG. Chinese consumers are fast becoming the world’s most discriminating and knowledgeable. Chinese consumer groups and their behavior are highly segmented, requiring very targeted, nuanced interactions. Continue Reading »
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Rob High, CTO, IBM Watson
By Rob High
IBM has long played a major role in Silicon Valley. We built a manufacturing plant there in 1943 and opened our IBM Research lab in San Jose in 1956–since then producing a string of technology breakthroughs including the first disk drive, the first data mining algorithms and essential advances in nanotechnology. My dad got his start as an IBM engineer in the Valley in 1958, so it has a special place in my heart.
IBM’s Watson business, which is based in New York City, is collaborating with dozens of startups in the Valley and San Francisco; and IBM’s venture group has close working relationships with a number of leading venture capitalists there.
To take Watson even further, today, IBM is greatly expanding our presence in this cradle of global technology innovation. We’re opening a Watson hub in San Francisco. This will put IBM closer to, and increase collaboration with, the local start ups, developers, venture capital groups, and academics we’re working with. We’ll host activities aimed at sparking a new wave of innovation built on advances in cognitive computing.
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Doug Schaedler, CEO, inno360
By Doug Schaedler
I was recently describing inno360′s new software release and enhanced functionality to a c-suite executive at a global consumer packaged goods company. He was intrigued by the fact that our latest software, thanks in part to IBM’s Watson technology, has the ability to learn and push more relevant information to employees as they interact with it. He saw that in a short period of time our software could make his whole company smarter and more efficient.
The reaction of this prospective client bodes well for inno360 clients and our recent ecosystem partnership with IBM Watson to deliver Watson cognitive capability. Our software offers the ability for our clients to achieve rapid and enhanced return on investment, but also will increase our revenues and make our software mission critical to our global client base, of which 15 are the #1 ranked leaders in their respective global vertical industries.
