Supercomputer Watson To Be Customer Service Rep

IBM’s famed supercomputer first made waves when the company introduced it as a computer specifically made to answer Jeopardy! questions. Since then, Watson’s development has expanded, and in 2011 it competed against former Jeopardy! winners Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter to take home a $1 million prize.

 

During the past several years, IBM has explored other uses for the Watson supercomputer system, including in the healthcare industry. Last week IBM announced that Watson would be taking on another role, in the form of a customer service agent.  The belief is that Watson can help individual consumers while helping maintain and build relationships between companies and their customers.  

 

“The supercomputer system was groundbreaking when it was first introduced, and now we are seeing where it can best be used,” says tech expert Karl Volkman of SRV Network, Inc. in Chicago. “From providing lung cancer diagnoses to helping businesses connect with customers, this is only the beginning of ways that Watson and other similar systems can change how we use technology in everyday settings.”

 

Watson’s knowledge source comes from a plethora of data including encyclopedias, dictionaries, news articles, literature and millions of documents and resources. For its use on Jeopardy!, Watson had access to 200 million pages of content but was not connected to the Internet. 

 

“As an artificially intelligent supercomputer system, Watson has the ability to not only use resources to build knowledge, but also to come up with the answers to questions and communicate them in real language to customers,” continues Volkman. “It may take awhile to perfect, but this is a big step for Watson and for the businesses who take on this new type of customer service.”