Students Dream Up New Uses for IBM's Watson

It beat the fastest finger on Jeopardy, tried its hand at health care, and worked as a smartphone-sized virtual assistant. But what's next for über-computer Watson?

In an effort to find its machine's next calling, IBM recently teamed up with the University of Southern California (USC) for the the IBM Watson Academic Case Competition, where Big Blue solicited ideas for Watson's next big thing.

The competition gathered ideas from more than 100 of today's bright young minds for how best to apply the supercomputer to pressing business and societal challenges. Students were broken into 24 teams, given 48 hours, and expected to define a new purpose for Watson that would be presented to a panel of judges, including school officials, IBM execs, and local business leaders. Three ideas swept the rest, earning high marks from the judges, and possibly steering Watson in a new direction.

The third-place concept placed the computer system in charge of identifying victims of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder "by uncovering insights from data that can help piece together their personal story and shed light on pain he or she may be experiencing."

Meanwhile, Watson could be used as an employee training system, the second-place team suggested, adding that a reported 41 percent of workers at companies with inadequate training programs plan to leave within a year, compared to 12 percent at organizations with excellent programs. Corporate human resource departments can put Watson to work crunching HR data, and hopefully drive shareholder value higher.

The most appealing option, according to the IBM panel: Legal Eagle Watson. Based on its ability to think like a human, quickly sifting through online legal documents for facts, Watson could identify evidence to support a lawyer's case, and also forecast its probability for success.

"By placing Watson in charge of research, firms can recover time and costs, while delivering better legal outcomes," IBM said in a statement. "In turn, firms that leverage Watson's speed and efficiency can address the growing legal trend towards 'flat fee' billing and research outsourcing."

A similar campaign for determining the IBM-based computer's future is in place at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), which was gifted with a modified version of Watson in January to allow students to tinker with the system and develop new uses for it.

Hopefully none of those projects involve swearing. Watson made headlines early this year after it was reported that the system developed a potty mouth thanks to slang on sites like Wikipedia and Urban Dictionary.

For more, check out Beyond Jeopardy: Watson Up Close.