Dubai: A supercomputer named Watson could be the next technological breakthrough as its capabilities go as far as helping to predict the future and save lives by analysing big data.
Created by IBM, Watson, which is fed with a vast amount of information and data, can analyse and rapidly answer questions through analytics, explained Bernard Meyerson, vice-president of innovation at IBM, at the second day of the Dubai Government Summit.
Watson is not only a question-answer tool, but can predict a flood, traffic jams, and even look at a patient’s data to predict when they will fall sick.
Pointing out that 90 per cent of the data in the world did not exist two years ago, Meyerson explained that big data is so large that we no longer can deal with it.
“With big data, we can predict the future that could help us save lives, avoid traffic ahead of time. Watson has the ability to make big-data information consumable,” he said.
Used by several hospitals in the US to analyse cases of health care, Watson showed its ability to analyse 3,500 text books from cover to cover and 4,000 other data sets in 17 seconds in one particular case.
The cognitive system, which can customise itself to your behaviour includes language processing, hypothesis generation and evaluation, and evidence-based learning, said Meyerson.
“Information technology should be taken for granted. It should be accessible and intelligent. We should use technology for the betterment of people and the betterment of society,” he said.
