IBM’s renowned supercomputer Watson, which has already tasted victory several times, has proven to have gotten even smarter.  Earlier this week Watson once again gained a victory in a Jeopardy quiz-show battle with a trio of Harvard Business School students, pulling out the win with a high wager on the Final Jeopardy clue that ends every game.

Both Watson and HBS students gave the right answer, but in the end Watson came up on the winning side and ended up with US$56,331 to HBS’s $42,399.  This is clear evidence that the IBM’s supercomputer is getting smarter, earning glory for its maker.  It has a plethora of software and a hardware clusters containing 2,880 power processor cores, along with a massive content archive out of which it finds answers for challenges of increasing difficulty.   Jeopardy quizzes have become a favorite for the AI powerhouse, boasting IBM’s super-computing capabilities.

Watson now has its own group dedicated to moving Watson beyond the game show world and into the commercial markets.  IBM will also deliver Watson as an on-premise or a hosted solution.  It won’t be multi-tenant in the short-term, but over time it will have uses that allow for a shared, cloud environment.

As we know, IBM Watson has been built to mimic how human thinks and decides with the use of computing.   Watson will be utilized commercially by WellPoint to deliver patient care and diagnosis solutions and reduce costs.  Giving his views on this supercomputer’s benefits for healthcare industry, General Manager, Watson Solutions, IBM Software Group said,

“With medical information doubling every five years and health care costs increasing, Watson has tremendous potential for applications that improve the efficiency of care and reduce wait times for diagnosis and treatment by enabling clinicians with access to the best clinical data the moment they need it. WellPoint’s commitment to innovation and their work to improve how care is delivered and benefits administered make them an ideal partner for IBM’s software and services to pioneer new efficiencies in health care.”

So far, IBM has been investing a lot in its Watson supercomputer, be it upgrading systems, investing dollars for R&D, or integrating smart grid technologies.  And in turn, it has got just what it was looking for–a computer-driven brainiac!