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Build a Chatbot with Watson APIs

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What is Watson Used For?

3:13 with Ben Jakuben

IBM Watson is a platform of APIs that IBM has trained on immense data sets for use as a service. The Watson APIs allow you to process speech, text, and images in an easy and natural way. They also allow you to further train services with your own custom data to provide context-specific analysis.

Documentation

What is Watson?

Bonus Material

Join Armen in this short bonus video where he expands on what Watson is and what it is capable of.

Also check out an extended interview with Armen and Nick Pettit about the future of Watson, artificial intelligence, and machine learning!

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    You have probably heard of Watson from it's famous appearance on Jeopardy 0:00
    in 2011, where it competed against previous champions and won. 0:05
    Or more recently, you might've seen commercials about Watson being 0:10
    used by H&R Block to help file taxes in the United States. 0:14
    >> Yeah, Armin, I've heard of these examples. 0:18
    But I didn't quite understand what it meant to be powered by Watson. 0:20
    It wasn't until we started to prepare for this course that I really kind of 0:24
    understood what's available and what other kinds of things people are working on. 0:27
    At first, I thought Watson was some kind of artificial intelligence system. 0:31
    That's partially true, isn't it? 0:35
    >> Yes, but it is really a platform of APIs that IBM has 0:38
    worked hard to train, that you can now use as a service for your own software. 0:43
    Essentially, though, Watson APIs allow you to process speech, 0:49
    text and images in an easy and natural way. 0:54
    IBM has trained these APIs on immense data sets, but you can also 0:58
    train them with your own data to make customized decisions and responses. 1:03
    It's important to note that Ginni Rometty, 1:09
    IBM's CEO, has coined the term augmented intelligence. 1:12
    This means that Watson is helping people and machine work together 1:18
    to create knowledge from data that enhances human expertise. 1:24
    >> That's awesome. 1:29
    >> Let me tell you about a recent application that some students at 1:30
    an MIT Hackathon created. 1:34
    The winning team at the MIT Hackathon used the Speech 1:38
    to Text and the Tone Analyzer services working in tandem. 1:42
    Their premise was the therapist's office, 1:48
    where couples would get counseling on their grievances and daily bickerings. 1:51
    With the therapist's permission, the conversation was recorded. 1:57
    The sound files were converted to text. 2:01
    The text was then fed into the tone analyzer service, 2:04
    where it depicted sentences by highlighting them in color. 2:07
    [SOUND] For example, the deep red color meant an angry tone. 2:11
    Slighter shades of red meant somewhat angry tone. 2:16
    Green stood for happy, yellow for sad, and so forth. 2:20
    The couple were able to identify sentences that triggered, 2:25
    that had become habitual and a de facto way of speaking to each other. 2:30
    And they practiced saying what they meant, except with a different tone. 2:36
    But not so combative or trenchant or sarcastic. 2:41
    This allowed the therapist to continue their session 2:46
    even after the office visit was over. 2:49
    They would practice at home answering some focused questions that 2:52
    the therapist depicted as trigger points for argumentative conversations. 2:57
    >> We're getting a little bit ahead of ourselves. 3:02
    But I think we can show you what you can do with some hands-on examples and 3:04
    some more stories like this. 3:08
    Let's take a look at a hands-on example in the next video. 3:10

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