????IBM公司鼎鼎大名的超級計算機沃森（Watson）在《危險邊緣》（Jeopardy，美國一檔著名的智力競賽節(jié)目——譯注）節(jié)目中擊敗了低劣的人類，但這僅僅是它小試牛刀的起點而已。很快，它將作為商用分析工具，在醫(yī)療、電信和金融服務等數(shù)據密集型行業(yè)大顯身手。

????一年前，沃森就已開始追隨前輩、棋壇高手“深藍”（Deep Blue）的腳步，證明機器比人類聰明（假如有人懷疑這一點的話）?，F(xiàn)在，沃森迎來了它的首位客戶——位于印第安納波利斯市的偉彭公司（WellPoint）。這家保險公司準備將這臺能量非凡的分析機器投入試運行。據IBM公司“沃森解決方案”（Watson Solutions）部門的總經理馬諾伊?薩杰那介紹，未來數(shù)月，更多客戶將會跟進啟用沃森系統(tǒng)，它們涵蓋了從醫(yī)療到金融服務業(yè)的廣泛領域。

????多年來，IBM一直致力于打造一臺能處理自然語言的計算機，它能又快又準地回答各種問題。沃森正是多年努力的結晶。這個計算集群由90臺服務器組成，去年在《危險邊緣》節(jié)目中首度亮相。但是，它可絕不是一臺僅供游戲競賽的小玩意兒。IBM公司計劃將沃森作為一項依托于云計算的服務進行銷售。借助這一產品，用戶可在不同的數(shù)據集里找到各種問題的答案。比如，金融服務公司能用它在新聞報道和市場研究報告中進行篩選，鎖定潛在的收購目標。醫(yī)療保健公司則能運用沃森處理醫(yī)療論文、歷史病歷甚至是病人自己的病史記錄，由此找出最對癥的診斷，確定最佳治療方案。

????當然，數(shù)據分析并不是什么新鮮事，但當今世界上所產生的海量數(shù)據卻是前所未有的事物。它們排山倒海，毫無條理，涵蓋了從Twitter留言、Facebook更新，到亞馬遜網站（Amazon）上的評論等在內，五花八門的信息。據薩杰那稱，現(xiàn)在全球90%的信息是在過去兩年間產生的。炮制數(shù)據不費吹灰之力，理解數(shù)據去也困難得多。這正是沃森和其他新一代分析型計算機應運而生的原因。超級計算機能在三秒內處理2億個網頁。此外，它還能理解人類的語言。可以將它想象為超大版本的iPhone語音助手Siri，即蘋果公司（Apple）的智能個人助理軟件。實際上，薩杰那表示，將來某一天，用戶確實可以智能手機或平板電腦上直接使用沃森的服務。他還計劃“教”沃森各種語言，包括日語和法語，以便為海外客戶服務。

????Beating lowly humans on Jeopardy was just the beginning. IBM's famed Watson supercomputer will soon be available as a commercialized analytics tool for data-heavy industries like healthcare, telecom and financial services.

????It's been one year since Watson followed in the footsteps of its chess-playing predecessor Deep Blue and proved -- just in case anyone had a doubt -- that machines are smarter than people. Now, Watson's first pilot customer, Indianapolis-based insurance company WellPoint (WLP), is getting ready to take the massive analytics engine for a test drive. More beta customers (spanning both healthcare and financial services) will follow in the next few months, according to IBM's (IBM) general manager of Watson Solutions, Manoj Saxena.

????Watson was the result of IBM's years-long quest to build a natural language processing machine that could answer questions with speed and accuracy. The computing cluster, comprised of 90 servers, made its debut on Jeopardy last year. But it wasn't just a game show gimmick. IBM plans to sell Watson as a cloud-based service companies can tap to find answers in disparate data sets. For example, a financial services firm could use it to sift through news reports and market research to find likely acquisition targets. Or a healthcare company could utilize Watson to process medical articles, prior cases and even a patient's own medical history and identify the most likely diagnosis and best course of treatment.

????Of course, data analytics is nothing new. But the terabytes upon terabytes of unstructured data in the world (including Tweets, Facebook updates and Amazon (AMZN) reviews) is unprecedented. According to IBM's Saxena, 90% of the world's information was generated in the last two years. Producing data is much easier than making sense of it. That's where Watson and other next-generation analytics tools come in. The supercomputer can process 200 million web pages in three seconds. What's more, it can understand human language. Think of it as the iPhone's Siri, Apple's (AAPL) intelligent personal assistant, on intergalactic steroids. In fact, Saxena says users will someday be able to access Watson from their smartphone or tablet. He also plans to "teach" Watson different languages, including Japanese and French, so it could work for customers abroad.