IBM sends Watson supercomputer to NY college

By Hum
in Back Page News

 Share

Recommended Posts

Grand Master

Hum

Posted
Posted

TROY, NY ? IBM is announcing Wednesday that it will provide a Watson system to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, the first time the computer is being sent to a university. Just like the flesh-and-blood students who will work on it, Watson is leaving home to sharpen its skills. Course work will include English and math.

"It's a big step for us," said Michael Henesey, IBM's vice president of business development. "We consider it absolutely strategic technology for IBM in the future. And we want to evolve it, of course, thoughtfully, but also in collaboration with the best and brightest in academia."

Watson is a cognitive system that can process massive amounts of data, including natural language. To beat "Jeopardy!" champions in 2011, it was fed the contents of encyclopedias, dictionaries, books, news dispatches and movie scripts. For its medical work, it takes in medical textbooks and journals. After it takes in data, Watson can provide information like a "Jeopardy!" answer, a medical diagnosis or an estimate of financial risk.

th?id=H.4811837395436702&pid=15.1&H=105&W=160

IBM, which provided a grant to RPI to operate Watson for three years, sees it as a way to help it boost the computer's cognitive capabilities.

Artificial intelligence researchers at RPI want to do things like improve Watson's mathematical ability and help it quickly figure out the meaning of new or made-up words. They want to improve its ability to handle the torrent of images, videos and emails on the Web, the sort of unstructured information that is overwhelmingly fueling the data boom.

more

This topic is now closed to further replies.
 Share
Go to topic listing

  • Posts

    • Samsung, Amazon extend 990 PRO 2TB NVMe SSD deal beyond Prime Day 2026

      By jahara21 · Posted

      That is $130 more than I paid for my 4TB a year ago. How is this a deal?
    • JetBrains' new AI-first 'IDE' JetBrains Air is now on Windows

      By David Uzondu · Posted

      JetBrains' new AI-first 'IDE' JetBrains Air is now on Windows by David Uzondu JetBrains has announced that JetBrains Air, its Agentic Development Environment (ADE) is now available for download on Windows x64 and ARM. You might not be familiar with JetBrains Air. It's this new desktop app that the company launched back in March 2026 to let developers hand off tasks to AI agents instead of writing every line manually. You can see it as more of an Agentic Development Environment (ADE) rather than a traditional Integrated Development Environment (IDE). The latter builds its features around a central text editor, while the former arranges everything around the AI agent itself. Here's how JetBrains describes it: Air was born from the ashes of Fleet, an experimental editor that the company quietly killed in December 2025 after realizing that competing directly with VS Code was a losing battle. The company repurposed Fleet's lightweight, modern architecture to build Air, transforming a basic code editor into a workspace for running multiple AI agents. When Air launched, it was only available for macOS. It wasn't until earlier this month that Linux users got a chance to play with the software. Now that Air is on Windows, you can do things like map out a complex feature in Plan mode and watch an AI write the implementation plan to a markdown file before writing any code. You can iterate on this plan, add references to specific classes or files, and choose whether to run the agent locally or inside an isolated Git worktree. Running agents in parallel means you can have Claude refactor a database schema in one branch while Codex writes tests in another, leaving you free to do other important things. You can even set up a pipeline where Claude writes the code, and Codex reviews it. At the moment, Air is free. If you have a JetBrains AI Pro or Ultimate subscription, you get full access to the built-in agents, though there's also the option to Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) to run APIs from Anthropic, OpenAI, or Google. If you're interested, here are the download links for both x64 and ARM64.
    • How do you future-proof a home or small office network?

      By Dan~ · Posted

      Depending how you’re wiring it internally, but try to put it inside conduit, that way in the future you can more easily replace cables, compared to running inside studs alone At least cat6a too
    • WhatsApp is getting usernames, and you can reserve your preferred one now

      By leonsk29 · Posted

      I bet Meta has lots of info on you anyway, gathered by other means. And Google, and Microsoft, and every other tech giant. If you use some form of modern electronic device, they own you already...
    • Bypassed Windows 11 shows surprising stability on ancient, completely unsupported hardware

      By leonsk29 · Posted

      I'm using Windows 11 Pro 25H2 on "ancient" hardware, too: - Core i7 3770K - GTX 1050 2GB - 16GB DDR3 1333 MT/s It runs flawlessly, not a single issue. I also have it on other ancient setups, but I don't remember the exact specs right now (Intel 4th. generation).

  • Recent Achievements

    • Reacting Well
      NovaEdgeX earned a badge
      Reacting Well
    • Week One Done
      NovaEdgeX earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • One Year In
      BA the Curmudgeon earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Conversation Starter
      rosiecharles earned a badge
      Conversation Starter
    • First Post
      KMilenkoski1202 earned a badge
      First Post

  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      530
    2. 2
      +Edouard
      264
    3. 3
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      149
    4. 4
      Steven P.
      97
    5. 5
      macoman
      61
    Show More

  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!