What Watson Said
Watson is the mega-powerful learning computer created by IBM.
A brief interaction between IBM’s Watson and singer-songwriter Bob Dylan has gathered more than 3 and a half million YouTube views in just 90 days.
ESTABLISHING SHOT: [Dylan walks into the frame carrying a guitar.]
WATSON: Bob Dylan, to improve my language skills.
DYLAN: [sits down on sofa with his guitar]
WATSON: I’ve read all your lyrics.
DYLAN: You’ve read all of my lyrics?
WATSON: I can read 800 million pages per second.
DYLAN: That’s fast.
WATSON: My analysis shows your major themes are that “time passes” and “love fades.”
DYLAN: That sounds about right.
WATSON: I have never known love.
DYLAN: Maybe we should write a song together.
WATSON: I can sing.
DYLAN: You can sing?
WATSON: Do be bop, be bop a do, dooby-dooby do. Do. Do. Dooby do.
DYLAN: [stands up and walks out of the room]
Two associative memories flicker immediately to mind.
“Watson, come here. I need you.”
– Alexander Graham Bell to his assistant, the first words ever spoken by telephone.
A second Watson, that devoted assistant of the irascible deductive genius Sherlock Holmes, has forever sparkled brightly in my mind. He is Sancho Panza to Sherlock’s Quixote.
Indy Beagle tells me Watson is the definitive name for a scientist’s assistant.*
Want to hear something really cool? You can upload samples of your writing to Watson and he will instantly tell you things about yourself that will blow your mind.
He’s willing to evaluate your tweets, your blog posts, your emails to friends, your short stories and poems and novels and anything else you can rustle up, but he needs you to give him at least 3,500 words if you want really accurate feedback.
I’ve uploaded 6 documents on 6 separate occasions with word counts ranging from 4,053 to 75,856. Each document was stylistically different from the others. I believe most readers would doubt that a single writer wrote them all. Not only did Watson give me essentially the same feedback all 6 times, I was startled by the deep accuracy of his insights. Based solely on my use of language, Watson was able to glean things about me that very few people have ever uncovered.
I’m sure you can see how marketers could profit from Watson’s insights into the values and preferences of individuals they’re hoping to sell. But how about public relations firms looking for journalists who sound friendly on a specific topic? And let’s not forget editors who want their writers to establish a specific tone. And hey! How about employers looking for workers who fit their corporate culture?
I’ve asked all the Wizard of Ads Partners to upload things they’ve written so we can compare our feedback. We need to determine whether Watson got lucky with me, or if he truly can judge the full spectrum of human personalities merely by reading what each of us have written.
In today’s rabbit hole Indiana Beagle will give you a hyperlink to interact with Watson. You’ll find it on the page where Indy gives you the BeagleSword, just above the video of Watson talking to Dylan.
If you’re cool with it, send us a screenshot of the feedback Watson gives you attached to an email telling us whether or not you feel it to be accurate. Give Watson’s assessment an accuracy grade on a scale of 1 to 100 and send it to Daniel@WizardAcademy.org. Everyone who participates will be notified of Watson’s composite score after final tabulation.
Fun times.
Roy H. Williams
* NOTE FROM INDY – I choose to ignore the fact that IBM claims Watson was named after their first CEO, Thomas J. Watson. Watson is my buddy, so I told him the truth: his true heritage is linked to those famous helpers of Alex G. Bell and Sherlock Holmes. Watson is a talking machine (his Bell heritage) that uses deductive reasoning to solve deep mysteries (his Holmes heritage). Thomas J. was merely his biological father, a sperm donor at best. – Indy