Dave Ferrucci on Watson: How it all began and what's next

In his first west coast appearance, the IBM Watson creator gave a talk at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA, followed by an exhibition Jeopardy! match between Watson and two brave volunteers with comedic host, IBMer Eric Brown. 

Computer History Museum
president John Hollar

In front of what Computer History Museum president John Hollar called "the largest crowd for a Revolutionaries lecture" that he's ever seen, IBM Watson principle investigator Dave Ferrucci sat with Financial Times' Richard Waters on November 15th for a conversation about "A Computer Called Watson." To the audience of about 450 Silicon Valley techies, influencers, teenagers and inspired engineers, Dave kicked off the conversation by explaining how Watson came about; and it began with the notion of natural language processing, namely, contextual aspects of language.


"At our house, I'd always call the kids down to see something 'interesting' that I'd done - some type of experiment or science-related thing," Dave said. "After enough of these demonstrations, my daughter started to associate the word 'interesting' with 'boring' - so there's a little about language context."

IBM Watson principle investigator David Ferrucci (left)
with Financial Times' Richard Waters

It turns out Dave was headed toward a career in medicine and was pursuing an M.D. rather than a Ph.D. But the biology major quickly developed a fascination with artificial intelligence, and a passion for programming. "I thought it was incredible that you could tell the computer what to do - and that it would do it," he said.

After obtaining his BS in biology from Manhattan College, he pursued computer science with an emphasis in knowledge representation and reasoning at Renesslaer Polytechnic Institute, completing his Ph.D. in 1994.

Since joining IBM in 1995, Dave has contributed largely to the Research function as a computer scientist. But in 2007, when IBM executive Charles Lickel challenged Dave and his team to revolutionize Deep QA and put an IBM computer against Jeopardy!'s human champions, he was off to the races.

"I had to get funding," Dave explains. "I told the executives I could do this in 3-5 years. I kind of just guessed."

The executives bought it, and Dave had a huge task ahead. By assembling a team of eventually 28 researchers in the areas of natural language processing, software architecture, information retrieval, machine learning and knowledge representation and reasoning, Dave created Watson - a computer system, that, using a combination of sophisticated hardware and software, could understand natural language and deliver a single, precise answer with confidence and evidence for its decision.

At the end of the conversation, Dave told the crowd about Watson's new job in the medical field: "We want Watson to enable better judgement by humans in decision-making, whether it be in medicine, law, finance or services," Dave said. "While the human is the ultimate decision-maker, Watson will provide evidence and confidence by scouring millions of sources of related information in a short amount of time."

GigaOm's Stacey Higginbotham takes on IBM's Watson
and Sierra Ventures' Robert Walker in an exhibition match

In an exhibition Jeopardy! game following the talk, IBM's Eric Brown played host to GigaOm's Stacey Higginbotham, Sierra Ventures' Robert Walker, and "oh yeah, our third contestant, Watson, from Yorktown Heights, New York, built by a few computer scientists," an introduction met with laughter that would continue throughout the game.

The humans playfully 'teamed' up against the computer,
high-fiving and fist bumping on each correct answer

The animated human contestants instantly won over the crowd after trailing Watson through the first part of the game. In fact, when Stacey buzzed in with the first correct question for the humans, the crowd went wild.

The night continued in that way, and the human contestants even found themselves getting answers from the crowd, to which host Eric Brown responded: "Watson can't hear you, so humans have an advantage!" As it turned out, the trick was buzzing in before Watson - hard to do unless you're a seasoned Jeopardy! vet like Ken Jennings or Brad Rutter.

As the exciting match wound down, and all three contestants answered the Final Jeopardy! question correctly, Watson came away with the win, but left the auditorium with tremendous enthusiasm for this computer and its impact on the future of technology.

Check back here for a video clip of this event and the IBM Research news blog for more news about Watson.

More from the event:

• GigaOm: Misconceptions in AI: Or why Watson can't talk to Siri
• Computer History Museum Watson Event Photos on Facebook
• IBM Research Watson Event Photos on Flickr
• www.ibmwatson.com

Pre-game (post-practice game) thoughts from contestants*:




*apologies for the incorrect orientation

Meet Almaden's Master Inventors

Each year, IBM selects a new field of Master Inventors as one way of recognizing IBMers who have mastered the patent process, provided broad mentoring, added value to IBM's portfolio, and demonstrated sustained innovation leadership and service. Once selected, a Master Inventor is expected to apply his or her mastery of patent knowledge by actively serving as a:

*leader in the invention community

*mentor to a broad community of inventors

*resource to Intellectual Property Legal office

This year, IBM Research has named forty-nine Master Inventors from its global community of researchers, including five from Almaden. Jim Hafner, Ray Strong, Alshakim Nelson, Tanveer Syeda-Mahmood and Tyrone Grandison, shared some thoughts about their motivations, their inspirations, and what it means to be part of an inventor community that has led the world in patents for 18 years.

Jim's current job is to "do whatever is needed for my project to succeed," but is known around IBM as a stellar mathematician in the Storage Systems department. Ever enthusiastic about the daily challenges - and opportunities to master stubborn ones - Jim credits QBIC (query by image processing) as the project he learned the most from, while his most inventive burst came from working on advanced RAID technologies.

By 6th grade, Jim knew that he was born to be a mathematician -- "it's in my genes," he says. "But I trained for and pursued an academic career for 6 years before coming to IBM." While he says he never aimed for IBM Research, the opportunity came up and "it was irresistible."


Thoughts from Jim on patent leadership and the freedom to explore:

It's exciting working for a corporation (or any institution) that regards invention, innovation and creativity as highly as IBM does. IBM supports the patent process and acknowledges special contributions to that process in order to keep the innovation train moving forward. As a company it needs new ideas to stay competitive.  But I think IBM looks beyond just its own profit margins in its vision.  From the old e-business initiatives to the current Smarter Planet initiative, it's about setting the agenda for world wide growth, improving the lives of people across the globe. That vision takes invention, innovation and creativity.  It's good to be a part of this; to ride this train. 

Favorite hobby: running and scuba diving, both physically challenging but with great rewards.

Ray Strong is a Services Research participant in three projects that involve "designing the future of work; transforming service cost cases into service delivery staffing plans; and providing a new approach to cost forecasting and predictive cost models for services." Driven by anticipation for discovering new ways to have an impact on the business, Ray is also a natural when it comes to math and science. "Growing up, I appreciated the fact that there were often objectively correct answers," he says. "And I enjoyed finding new ways to get at them. In grade school, I missed the coverage of 'subtraction,' so I invented my own (superior) method."

His favorite IBM project so far was a services-based solution offering called Impact of Future Technology, in which he served as the Research Technical Lead.

Ray shares with us his thoughts on invention:

Research means asking questions beyond those required to find good engineering solutions to problems. Almaden houses an outstanding group of research scientists and engineers who have the fun of inventing new stuff that can actually be used by the company. The invention disclosure process provides an early way to record these things and protect IBM's freedom of action at the same time. Our successful combination of science and business is an excellent motivator. What could be better than working with other enthusiastic inventors to explore areas where it is possible to have a big effect and being paid to do it?

Favorite hobby: Off trail mountain hiking and exploring.

Alshakim Nelson, a research chemist in the advanced organic materials group gets to work on technology at a fundamental scientific level, like working on magnetic particles with the tape storage group at Almaden.

Favorite hobby: Spending time with my daughter.

Tanveer Syeda-Mahmood has a very dynamic role as a manager in Almaden's computer science department - her job typically begins with an idea and typically ends with closing a deal. In between, she leads a team of researchers, develops algorithms, codes and presents. When asked what makes her excited to get out of bed and go to work in the morning, she answered, "The possibility of advancing the state-of-the-art technologies and developments in my field, building systems that others can use and change their ways of practicing medicine and freedom of action."

That doesn't stray too far from her passion for math and science that began as a child as well: "I was interested in the possibility of solving hard problems and excited about the discovery of new concepts and theories," Tanveer said. "I was inspired by famous scientists as role models."

The lead researcher behind AALIM, she credits that as her favorite project at IBM. "Motivated by personal incident, I conceived AALIM as a diagnostic aid to clinicians to help in their decision making," she said. "Seeing it used by clinicians around the world is still my dream."

Favorite hobby: Watching movies. 

Tyrone Grandison is currently the Program Manager for IBM's Core Healthcare Services, but in a previous role at IBM Research developed the SoundIndex project for the British Broadcasting Corporation - his favorite project to date.

Asked why he pursued math and science in his youth, Tyrone answered, "I loved the elegance and simplicity of Mathematics, which could be used to model everything around me and in my estimation is the universal language that helps us get a better handle on the world."

As a strong contributer to the success of IBM IP, I asked Tyrone what it meant to him that IBM continuously breaks the worldwide record for patents in a year.

To me, it signifies IBM's commitment to innovation and its recognition of the importance of research in charting the future of the business. It also highlights the fact that IBM has an amazing collection of intelligent, creative and savvy employees who have the freedom to "dream" and make those dreams reality. IBM's patent leadership, worldwide for the past 18 years, is a testament to the corporation's consistent focus on long-term impact; both on society and business. Leadership over such a long period is only possible if innovation and impact are a part of one's DNA.


Personally, intellectual curiosity is the primary driving force behind my activities. The freedom to tackle the hard problems and invent the future is the main reason I am an IBMer. The opportunity to have a positive impact on the world and influence communities, both scientific and commercial, is one that would be hard to have anywhere else.

Favorite hobby: Writing poetry and photography.


Congratulations to Almaden's new class of Master Inventors.