Watson in the Watt
by Niko Hajimihalis
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize the world as we know it. For many, the term AI evokes imagery of science fiction, yet in reality, this new form of technology has wide ranging applications that are incredibly beneficial to society. Whether it is through improving efficiency, accuracy or intelligent decision making across industries, this innovative new technology has improved rapidly over the last two decades. The Watt Family Innovation Center partnered with IBM in order to bring IBM’s artificial intelligence computer system named Watson to campus to explore AI use cases. The partnership resulted in the IBM Watson in the Watt Corporate Creative Inquiry project led by Dr. Hudson Smith in the Watt Family Innovation Center and Dr. Kuang-Ching Wang from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The project recruits some of the brightest and most creative students from majors across campus. Currently, the students are working with nine research teams to help faculty incorporate IBM Watson’s technology into their research or research analyses. These studies vary from using AI to understand political discourse on social media to combing through millions of Reddit comments to understand trends on the Internet to predicting the sex of chicken eggs.