A machine learning algorithm helps IBM beat its competitors
A computer science professor at the University of Illinois says IBM is the “only company” that can beat Apple in the long run.
John R. Watson is the professor of computer science at the school.
He’s been an IBM researcher for over a decade and was one of the original developers of the Watson platform, the name for IBM’s cognitive computing systems.
He says Apple’s AI isn’t powerful enough to compete with IBM’s, and it’s also difficult to get good results with the new platform.
“You have to be able to do something really good, and that’s a very hard thing to do,” Watson said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal.
“You have a lot of different problems, and the best way to solve all of them is to use machine learning.”IBM isn’t the only tech company working on machine learning.
The Boston Consulting Group predicts the technology will be the “first big-ticket item” in a $4 trillion global IT market by 2020.
Apple’s AI rivals IBM and Microsoft are already taking advantage of Watson’s strengths, like the ability to detect trends and analyze data from hundreds of millions of customers.
Watson says the system can predict whether a customer is likely to buy an Apple product, and whether they’re likely to return.
The company also has a new data center where it can analyze and compare data from other data centers and find ways to improve the algorithms.
IBM says it’s working on software to allow it to leverage Watson’s capabilities to better understand customers’ preferences, and to help the company improve its customer service and product development.IBM’s Watson team is also working on building a version of the software that can be used to predict and analyze consumer preferences and behavior.