John Timmer, Ars Technica:
Earlier today, IBM announced that it would be using Watson, the system that famously wiped the floor with human Jeopardy champions, to tackle a somewhat more significant problem: choosing treatments for cancer. In the process, the company hopes to help usher in the promised era of personalized medicine.
The announcement was made at the headquarters of IBM’s partner in this effort, the New York Genome Center; its CEO, Robert Darnell called the program “not purely clinical and not purely research.” Rather than seeking to gather new data about the mutations that drive cancer, the effort will attempt to determine if Watson can parse genome data and use it to recommend treatments.
A far more noble use for Watson’s horsepower than playing Jeopardy.