Applications of Computing in Industry : Lecture

In February 2011, IBM unveiled Research breakthroughs in natural language processing and machine learning by entering the question answering system .Watson. into the famously complex US television quiz-show 'Jeopardy!' This was a big success, and Watson comfortably beat two of the greatest human players ever to appear on the show. Since then, work has focused on bringing these breakthroughs to real-world problems, in fields such as healthcare. Dale will talk about how Watson has been put to work since Jeopardy! and what the future of cognitive computing might have in store.

Dale is one of the developers of IBM Watson, currently working to transform the incredible achievements that Research demonstrated on Jeopardy! into a platform that can be used to build real-world Watson solutions. In particular, he is responsible for accuracy analysis - how we understand why Watson comes up with the answers that it does, and what we can do to improve it. Prior to joining Watson in 2011, he spent several years in ETS (Emerging Technology Services) - a part of IBM's Software Group that is responsible for looking ahead to tomorrow's technologies. They help bridge the gap between Research and Development for our clients, identifying ways to exploit upcoming technologies.