IBM joins the AI race with WatsonX; will 'multiply impact' of artificial intelligence across businesses

The iconic American multinational corporation, International Business Machines Corps (IBM) dipped its toes into artificial intelligence more than 10 years ago. In 2010, it created Watson, a software that was capable of answering questions in natural language. It captured people’s attention for winning the game show “Jeopardy!”. But the offering was never really substantiated commercially, and eventually, IBM was forced to sell its Watson Health unit for an undisclosed amount. But now, in 2023, the tech giant is back and has joined the AI race with its new WatsonX AI platform.

IBM unveiled the platform earlier today, May 9 as an all-in-one toolkit to build and integrate AI solutions for enterprises. Introducing WatsonX, IBM website mentions, “Watsonx is our upcoming enterprise-ready AI and data platform designed to multiply the impact of AI across your business. The platform comprises three powerful components: the watsonx.ai studio for new foundation models, generative AI and machine learning; the watsonx.data fit-for-purpose store for the flexibility of a data lake and the performance of a data warehouse; plus the watsonx.governance toolkit, to enable AI workflows that are built with responsibility, transparency and explainability”.

IBM announces WatsonX AI platform

While the first AI experiment by IBM was not a resounding success, this time, the tech company is more confident in its ability and the platform to be able to offer the right tools needed by businesses to cope with the increasing complexities involved. In a press conference, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna told Reuters, “When something becomes 100 times cheaper, it really sets up an attraction that’s very, very different. The first barrier to create the model is high, but once you’ve done that, to adapt that model for a hundred or a thousand different tasks is very easy and can be done by a non-expert”. Watsonx.ai availability is expected in July.

What does WatsonX.AI bring to the table?

It has rolled out new generative AI capabilities with which businesses can train, validate, tune, and deploy models with ease and build AI applications in a fraction of the time, and even more importantly, with a fraction of the data.

Job losses?

Krishna says that WatsonX could replace some back office jobs at IBM in coming years. However, he does not look at it as an employment loss issue. He explained, “That doesn’t mean the total employment decreases. That gives the ability to plow a lot more investment into value-creating activities…. We hired more people than were let go because we’re hiring into areas where there is a lot more demand from our clients.”

What does WatsonX consist of?

According to the official WatsonX website, the AI platform can be divided into three capabilities — watsonx.ai, watsonx.data and watsonx.governance — all of which can do separate tasks.

Watsonx.ai - It is a studio for foundation models and can build generative AI, machine learning tools, and similar products.

Watsonx.data - Built for analytics and AI workloads, it can build tools and platforms around data storage, data collection and data processing to build AI models capable of high-level analytics.

Watson.governance - It helps enable responsibility, transparency and explainability in data and AI workflows to direct, manage, and monitor an organization’s AI activities.

IBM also mentioned that the AI models created using the WatsonX platform can be built for different purposes such as chemical creation or climate change modeling.