IBM Watson® and TED®: Part one of four

Ready to interact with AI-infused video?

What can we learn from Artificial Intelligence (AI) about ourselves and others? At first blush, that seems like an odd question. Programmers are busy teaching AI systems to learn and respond to us. Siri®, Cortana®, Alexa®, Google Assistant® and Bixby® may already be in the palms of your hands or in your home around you. The interaction follows specific patterns. For example, you speak, the AI interprets what you’ve said, and the AI responds. By now, you may even have an AI set to wake you up each morning, report the news and play mood music.

But how would you like to explore a working AI example that goes far beyond the question-response or pre-programmed interaction? It’s real, it’s live, and it’s on the web. It’s where IBM® Watson and TED come together in a fascinating demonstration project.

You may have seen Watson in some of the many TV commercials. But…

What is IBM Watson?

Glad you asked! Watson is IBM’s artificial intelligence platform. Watson has been used in many specialized areas such as Watson for Healthcare (starting in 2012), Watson for Financial Services (starting in 2014) and Watson for HR applications (2016). IBM continues to build and release new connectors to Watson for an increasing array of uses. Some of these are free to use; some are monetized. (A couple of Decembers ago, did you install the free Watson app that let you watch Christmas shopping trend charts?)

If you’d like to know more about IBM Watson, check this resource: IBM Watson: How it Works

What Is TED?

TED is a media organization which posts talks online for free distribution, under the slogan “ideas worth spreading”. The TED video library has been building steadily for decades.

(Reference: www.TED.com)

In this article, we’ll focus on one specific manifestation of Watson – a fascinating and free to use demonstration project in which IBM teamed up with TED.

How does IBM Watson interact with TED?

In partnering with TED, the IBM team set out to accomplish these major strategies:

  1. Show how Watson can be a cognitive discovery engine that analyzes videos for concepts, keywords, sentiment, language, and taxonomy.
  2. Give us easy ways to interact with Watson, and receive interest-driven playlists of TED videos.

 

“Sometimes it’s challenging to actually find the ideas that you want within a body of information, and with the proliferation of video being the dominant form of data on the web, that problem is only going to grow. Watson offers a solution to this challenge“.

– Kai Young, TED + Watson Prototype Program Director, IBM.

In Summary

In Part One of this four-part series, we’ve set the stage for exploring and understanding Watson + TED.

Coming up

Part Two
Four different ways to interact with Watson and explore TED videos that are meaningful to you (or others that you select). Read more…
Part Three
Understanding what Watson is doing when we interact with TED. Read more…
Part Four
In the last segment, we’ll see the bridge to new capabilities in IBM Cloud Video, a secure streaming video service for businesses in Canada. Read more…
Questions? Let’s talk.
Contact Bob Swift-Hill at 403-461-6227 or swifthillb@saas-ssi.com

Graphic and web design by Virgil Smith