Remember Watson? No Sherlock wizard, but the artificial intelligence system developed by IBM that swept the ground with the greatest champions of the game Jeopardy!. Today Watson aims to apply its capacity on financial processes and cancer studies, however, IBM has not stood idly by. The next step is Watson 2.0, an advanced version that allows use in smartphones and other mobile devices. The technical challenges are enormous, but something similar was said about Watson at the time, and we have seen what he did.

I have personally seen the confrontation between Watson, Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings in the special challenge of Jeopardy! half a dozen times. Although Watson was not free from gross errors (Toronto is not a city in the United States, for example) their performance was relentless. But what happened after that? What is Watson doing today, and what will be tomorrow? According to information available, both Citigroup and Wellpoint have made use of their abilities, while the plan remains primary market related technology. But there is more, and that Watson is no longer a system as any. Can be optimized in many aspects, including reduced power consumption, and of course, miniaturization. With the latter in mind, IBM Watson wants to see running on smartphones, and other mobile devices.

The current Watson can not do that, but Watson 2.0 itself. The Vice President of Innovation Bernie Meyerson IBM stated that the level of energy required to operate at Watson is "falling like a stone", a detail that will eventually enable the possibility of a mobile version. To better visualize this, imagine a Watson in smartphones as a supercharged version of Siri. The staff care system Apple became an icon in Cupertino products, but studies that locate their effectiveness below 70 percent. Watson can not afford it, especially if they seek to tempt the business environment. To do this, Watson 2.0 will incorporate "senses" through voice recognition and images.



One of the most important challenges to be faced by IBM engineers in processing power and energy consumption locally. Today Watson relies on a hardware equivalent to six thousand desktops, quite far to the average of four cores on a smartphone there. Although Watson process their results through the cloud, the resources required by an application that supports smartphones and tablets would still be too high. To this is added the process of "learning" to be submitted to Watson, but it's all a matter of time. If IBM Watson wants to turn our personal assistant for mobile devices, is because it should be within reach.

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