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Game Changer: IBM’s Supercomputer ‘Watson’ will now Be Open to the Public

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People may be familiar with IBM’s supercomputer “Watson” that is able to answer questions in a natural human voice and was famous for competing and winning on the game show Jeopardy! Now IBM is ready to open up Watson’s capabilities to the public, as the company announced that it will be allowing people to access the supercomputer through the cloud. According to theverge.com:

“IBM’s Watson supercomputer is taking a big step towards public use. Today, the company announced plans to open Watson up to developers in 2014, establishing an open platform and API that would let coders build apps on top of the supercomputer’s database and natural language skills.

It’s not the first time the project’s been used by outside groups, but the new platform will give developers complete control of the front end, and require only minimal input from the Watson team at IBM. Companies will still have to contract an instance of Watson from IBM, but once that’s done, their programs will be able to pull questions and answers from the supercomputer in real time.”

This is a big step in the line of computing as it helps to further democratize the technology era, making resources that would usually cost millions available at a fraction of the cost. As reported by nytimes.com:

” [This] is an indication of how quickly the technology industry is changing, from complex systems that cost millions to install to pay-as-you-go deals that provide small companies and even individuals access to technology that just a few years ago only the largest companies could afford.

‘The next generation will look back and see 2013 as a year of monumental change,’ said Stephen Gold, vice president of the Watson project at IBM.

“This is the start of a shift in the way people interact with computers.'”

It will be interesting to see how developers initially use the IBM “Watson,” but  with most open systems, we can expect people to get creative and find some really great applications for the supercomputer.

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