Watson as a service: IBM preps AI in the cloud

Intelligent Machines

Watson as a service: IBM preps AI in the cloud

InfoWorld

by Serdar Yegulalp | InfoWorld

By offering Watson's machine-learning system in the cloud, IBM could expand AI's frontiers and monetize the work as it happens.

IBM's likely to be in competition with at least two other purveyors of intelligent systems. One is Wolfram Research, whose Wolfram Alpha "computational knowledge engine" has spawned divisive opinions about its true usefulness. It supplies back-end knowledge for Apple's Siri, but its most newsworthy front-end achievement of late was to add every single Pokémon to its database.

The biggest elephant in the room is Google, of course. What gives Google a possible edge is its unprecedented access to more raw information -- and more kinds of it -- than just about anyone else. What's less clear is if it has the chops to deliver something truly useful and battle-tested to some degree. If in fact Google has something under wraps right now to rival both Wolfram and IBM, it would be high time to start talking about it. Read the entire article