There is a joke that the number of Lee Sedol's commercials and IBM's stock price soared because of AlphaGo, an artificial intelligence (AI) Go program developed by Google DeepMind.

The reason IBM was able to reap the windfall of being a stock that benefited from AlphaGo was because of Watson, an artificial intelligence computer system that can answer questions in natural language. In the chess match of the century held in New York in 1997, world chess champion Garry Kasparov and IBM's supercomputer Deep Blue faced off, and in 2011, Watson competed against humans on the quiz show Jeopardy. In both of these matches, the machine (artificial intelligence) ultimately won.

Interest in Watson continued at the IBM Connect 2016 - A New Era of Thinking event held on the 12th. About 1,500 industry insiders showed keen interest at the event, which showed how IBM's cognitive business is being implemented in all areas including Watson, cloud, analytics, security, and IT infrastructure.

At the event, IBM Korea President Jeffrey Rhoda said, “80% of the data being created worldwide is unstructured data, and 80% of all data is not being utilized,” and “In the cognitive era, we will enable computers to acquire and learn from more data.” Jason Leonard, who is in charge of Watson's business in the Asia Pacific region, began his keynote by talking to Nao-mi, a robot equipped with Watson's cognitive computing technology.


▲ Pepper, a robot from Softbank, Japan, equipped with IBM's Watson

Of course, this many people did not gather because of Watson alone, but it was clear that behind IBM's cognitive business, there was an artificial intelligence like Watson. Before this, at the CES exhibition last January, IBM President Ginni Rometty declared the advent of the cognitive business era, saying, "A huge amount of data is connected to form a huge Internet of Things (IoT) in various industries, but digital alone cannot create differentiated value in the huge IoT market," and emphasized that "cognitive computing is the only answer that can create differentiated value."

IBM's cognitive computing refers to the implementation of cognition, or a kind of thinking ability, in all digital intelligence (digital applications, products, processes, systems, etc.). In order to analyze data and obtain differentiated business insights, it is necessary to understand, infer, and learn data like a person based on natural language to provide the best solution. IBM judged Watson's cognitive ability to be the future of the Internet of Things, and announced in March 2015 that it would invest 3 billion dollars in combining cognitive computers and the Internet of Things.

In fact, it is accurate to say that Watson is a kind of software. To use Watson, a SaaS (Software as a service) solution built on a cloud environment, you can go to the Watson Developer Cloud site, open the API (Application Programming Interface), and immediately create various applications. IBM plans to continuously expand the 28 APIs currently available to 50 next year and 70 the year after. Here, artificial intelligence solutions created by hundreds of startup companies play a central role in forming the ecosystem, and are currently widely used in fields such as finance, public, and medical.

Kim Yeon-joo, managing director of IBM Korea, said in a statement, “Since Watson was introduced on the Jeopardy show in 2011, it has only been three years since a commercial product that can be applied to real life and corporate environments was released in 2014,” adding, “AI is no longer a technology of the future; it is a technology of the present.” She also said that Watson will learn Korean by the end of the year, reflecting the relationship with IBM Korea’s partners and the keen interest.

In his keynote speech titled “Watson Reinvents Business in the Cognitive Age,” Executive Vice President Jason emphasized, “We are continuously teaching Watson to respond to natural language. We are inputting commands, but we are teaching it to naturally understand human expressions.” He added, “However, it will not replace human work, but will act as an assistant to help people make decisions.”

Watson that makes an employee with 2 years of experience work like an employee with 10 years of experience?

So how does this mean that artificial intelligence helps people? Jason says that Watson, with its information knowledge, memory function, and machine learning, advises humans with senses, imagination, and experience to make decisions without bias. For example, Watson applied in the medical field recommends (advises) treatment for patients complaining of dizziness based on various diagnostic information, symptoms, and family history, helps analyze customers by reading and analyzing people's writing, and can even be used to counsel students who are having trouble adjusting to college life.

IBM introduced the term 'Watson IoT' for this. 'Watson IoT' is the concept of learning from the real world and infusing intelligence into the real world. For example, an engine manufacturer may collect and transmit real-time performance data and use predictive analytics, or an automobile company may use vehicle and other IoT data to reduce fuel costs and improve the safety of drivers and fleet managers.

IBM Korea President Jeffrey Rhoda said that Watson will work like a person, learning and acquiring information, so “an employee with two years of experience will be able to work like an employee with ten years of experience.” This is also why some of the people who attended the event said that Watson will ultimately be a battle of ideas. In order for even new employees to work like someone with five or ten years of experience, a lot of rich application development will have to follow.