Thursday, January 9, 2014

IBM's Watson: a big question

You may have noticed the mention of IBM's Watson in today's Wall Street Journal. It looks/feels to me like IBM has big plans for Watson.

I have mixed feelings about it. It's existence (and future) touches on some really important issues, such as privacy, that will have to be sorted out.

But for the moment, assuming Watson is nothing more then a giant question answering machine, here's a big question it should be asked:

"Should Bush should be put on trial for the invasion of Iraq?"

The facts are available, millions of pieces of data exist, no doubt. There is so much information (and disinformation) that a human would need a lifetime to systematically and intelligently sort it all out and present a case one way or the other. Watson can do it in a few minutes, at most, and it could generate a log showing how it reasoned for people to study and decide.


Bill