IBM Watson is a super advanced (and super smart) technology platform. It uses natural language processing to answer questions and analyze enormous amounts of data. Watson allows humans and computers to also interact with natural, human-friendly language.
Watson is being integrated into a variety of industries. Big Blue made the technology available to anyone and any entity; from the largest global enterprise to the individual creating an app at home.
Here are seven incredible uses for Watson that you many have not imagined:
1. In Vehicles With OnStar
GM announced a partnership with IBM to integrate Watson with OnStar, delivering personalized content to drivers, expanding OnStar AtYourService. The integration allows the OnStar service to create a very personalized driving experience. For example, it can remind you to pick up milk at the store before you get off the highway exit, or it can provide food recommendations in the area you are driving in. Brand partnerships will create capabilities such as the system letting you know where the next Exxon gas station is located or making payments from your car with a MasterCard.
2. As a Music Producer
Watson can also help to make music. In a collaboration with Grammy Award-winning music producer Alex Da Kid, Watson analyzed popular culture texts and pop music throughout the years. The technology discovered patterns between various keys, chord progressions, and genres, completing an emotional fingerprint of music by year, which Alex Da Kid used to bring emotional insight into his new song “Not Easy.â€
3. With Slack
IBM is partnering with communications and collaboration platform Slack to create a more powerful Slackbot–Slack’s artificial intelligence-fueled customer service bot. Bots automate customer interaction using natural language chat, and customers experience chat as though they are having a conversation with another human, as opposed to with a computer. Slackbot will also be available for enterprise IT departments to identify and respond to computer and data center problems.
4. For Toyota Financial Services
Toyota Financial Services uses Watson Explorer to enhance the service experience of its auto loan and lease customers. With the technology, TFS call center agents and analysts get instant access to information and insights. Watson can crawl through and analyze petabytes of data in seconds, freeing up time spent by call agents researching solutions for customers.
5. With 1-800-Flowers
1-800-Flowers uses Watson to create a personalized shopper for customers. A customer can type in the search function on the 1-800-Flowers’ site, “I am looking for a gift for my Mom.†Via a Watson-fueled search, the customer will be asked a number of relevant questions. Then the site can make suggestions based on the customer’s responses.
6. On Sesame Street
Big Bird has teamed up with IBM to create personalized interactive learning experiences for tykes. Together, the two will develop a new category of adaptive learning. According to Jeff Dunn, the CEO of Sesame Workshop, the goal is to “design new educational platforms and products to adapt to the learning preferences and aptitude levels of individual preschoolers, regardless of socioeconomic background.â€
7. To Fight California’s Drought
OmniEarth, an environment tech startup, uses geloanalytics to help solve the issue of water shortages. Using Watson, the company can process, clarify, and fuse an insane amount of satellite and aerial images with other data sets. With this data, OmniEarth can help identify land parcels that need to reduce water usage and by how much.
“If we can determine how much water a property needs on every given day, then compare that to how much that property is actually using, we can calculate exactly how much potential that property or that homeowner has to save water,†says Chelsea Minton, senior sales engineer at OmniEarth.