Last Updated on 14 December 2016 by ianr

Has Watson taken over from Holmes?

On the left Benedict Cumberbatch taking the part of Holmes the one we have always believed to be the brains of the operation ably supported by his sidekick Watson played by Martin Freeman – both appearing as characters in the BBC series Sherlock.

With the continued advancement in the wondrous technology of “Artificial Technology” we may all soon have to review the order of preference to Watson and Holmes – the IBM AI (artificial intelligence) supercomputer WATSON

So who or what is IBM WATSON– IBM themselves describe it as

• “a cognitive technology that can think like a human” …………………….. Scarey

Originally designed to defeat two grandmasters on the TV quiz show Jeopardy, Watson has since gone on to become the AI supercomputers by which all others are judged. The system can process over 500 gigabytes, or the equivalent of 1 million books, every second. Now, IBM is partnered with over 300 firms from all fields, to use WATSON’s Natural Language Processing capabilities for their own ends. These partnerships continue to grow, particularly in the field of medical research and diagnosis and this is the one where it really gets exciting because WATSON is making huge strides in the diagnosis and potential treatment of diseases such as cancer as highlighted in this recent Bloomberg interview – Watson may help beat cancer listen to it for yourself the speed at which WATSON can work is truly amazing.

The vast majority of us have little or no idea what is going on in the world of AI supercomputers because WATSON is far from alone –

Google has “Deep Mind” – DeepMind Technologies a British company looking to combine machine learning and the pursuit of neuroscience bought out by Google in 2014.and renamed Google DeepMind tasked with building the best general purpose learning algorithms in the industry

Microsoft has Project Oxford – their venture into the world of artificial intelligence and deep learning. It takes in several key areas, including image, facial, text and speech recognition, and hopes to implement the technology into its computer operating systems and smartphone software

Baidu, Google’s Chinese equivalent has Minwa which mirrors the IBM Watson model, with over 72 processors and 144 graphics processors. Its image recognition capabilities are among some of the best in the world of artificial intelligence.

And there are probably lots more out there with not quite so famous sponsors

Here at Global Door we do not pretend to understand the science of AI – but it is nice to share information when we find it – even if it is scary. We operate with some pretty stylish Apple Macs – which are very good for what we do but you can rest assured that we are not going to change the world anytime soon – we neither have the hardware or the brainpower. What we do have is an excellent user friendly web site selling quality doors at competitive prices all backed by a very professional Sales, Administration and Installation Service. Composite front doors in a range of styles and colours that would grave any home after you have amazed and scared yourself (we were) by following up the leads we have provided why not come back down to earth take a look at our web site and purchase a new front door from Global Door