IBM’s Watson Goes To School

You’ve hear about Watson, IBM’s own child and artificial intelligence system that has been touted for its super-computing powers. Well, Watson might know a lot of stuff, defeated “Jeopardy!” champions, and memorized the Urban dictionary, but it still needs to go to school. IBM has announced that it will be sending Watson to New York State’s Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Although that sounds weird, but yes, Watson is the first computer to be sent to university. Watson will be learning courses in math and English.

Researchers at RPI will also be working with IBM to help improve Watson’s mathematical ability and help it quickly figure out the meaning of new or made-up words. Researchers are also planning to improve its ability to handle the torrent of images, videos and emails on the Web, and the sort of unstructured information that is overwhelmingly fueling the data boom. The initiative is also beneficial for RPI students as the project will prepare them for jobs in cognitive science and “big data,” a field where demand is quickly outpacing supply.