ARMONK, N.Y., April 21, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE:
IBM) today announced new capabilities for IBM Watson designed
to help businesses build trustworthy AI. These capabilities further
expand Watson tools designed to
help businesses govern and explain AI-led decisions, increase
insight accuracy, mitigate risks and meet their privacy and
compliance requirements.
An IBM-commissioned survey found that trust, transparency
and explainability are top-of-mind concerns for businesses, with
84% of AI professionals surveyed agreeing that consumers are more
likely to choose services from a company that offers transparency
and an ethical framework on how its data and AI models are built,
managed and used. However, the barriers to developing trustworthy
AI and mitigating risk remain pervasive, with 82% of AI
professionals surveyed saying their organization has been
negatively impacted by problems, like bias, with data or AI
models[1].
To help businesses overcome these challenges, IBM is continually
bringing new capabilities to its Watson products that are designed to build
trust throughout key stages of the AI lifecycle and to help
businesses achieve greater confidence in AI-powered outcomes. The
new capabilities announced today include:
- New data privacy management capabilities: IBM OpenPages
with Watson now includes a new
Data Privacy Management module designed to help businesses meet
evolving data privacy challenges. By integrating with Watson
Knowledge Catalog, IBM OpenPages can now provide businesses with a
holistic, near real-time view of how private data is being used
throughout the organization, from applications to AI models. As new
privacy regulations are enacted around the world, businesses need
to be able to account for how they use personal data. This new
capability is designed to help automate the reporting of personally
identifiable information (PII) in order to improve accuracy and
reduce audit times.
- Enhanced explainability for planning forecasts: IBM
Planning Analytics with Watson
will include a new statistical details page designed to provide
more transparent and easy-to-understand facts about how a
forecasting prediction was generated. As more businesses turn to
predictive forecasting capabilities to strengthen their financial,
sales and supply chain planning, they require transparency in the
models and data used to generate the forecast. This new feature is
planned for generally availability in 2021 Q2 to provide users with
more granular information as well as increased explainability and
accountability in their forecasts.
- New Federated Learning capabilities: IBM Watson Studio
now includes new federated learning capabilities as a tech preview
to help businesses apply machine learning techniques to situations
where data cannot or should not be moved due to reasons such as
data privacy, secrecy, regulatory compliance, or simply the size of
data involved. With IBM Watson Studio, businesses will be able to
train AI models on previously siloed data sources.
- New Time Series capabilities: IBM Watson Studio now
includes Time Series capabilities in beta designed to tackle the
challenges of automating, analyzing, and forecasting time series
data commonly seen in many industries like finance, manufacturing,
and retail. The new capabilities are designed to help businesses
develop models that predict future values of a time series based on
past data or features. Time Series on IBM Watson Studio is designed
to achieve accuracy across a variety of univariate datasets —
including data such as phone call data logs, weather data, travel
times, retail sales, production volume, to driving increase insight
accuracy.
"AI is only as useful as your trust in it. Especially in
business and when the stakes are high," said Daniel Hernandez, General Manager, Data and AI,
IBM. "IBM Watson continues to deliver critical new capabilities to
help enterprises build trust into every step of the AI lifecycle so
business leaders can confidently operationalize AI across the
hybrid cloud."
Leading global brands are using IBM Watson to infuse trust into
their workflows. Deutsche Lufthansa AG, Germany's largest airline, is using IBM Watson
Studio to build a trusted data and AI foundation to enhance the
customer experience and better empower its employees while
achieving operational excellence.
IBM is continually harvesting innovations from IBM Research to
give businesses the tools, solutions, practices, and skills to
govern AI responsibly, including the
recently announced AI Factsheets methodology that
will be commercialized into Watson Studio in Cloud Pak for Data
throughout 2021. Factsheets further complements existing solutions
such as IBM Watson OpenScale, IBM Watson Knowledge
Catalog, and IBM Watson Machine Learning to provide
customers with end-to-end AI lifecycle management and governance
capabilities.
Global research firm Gartner recently positioned IBM as a Leader
in the 2021 Magic Quadrant for Data Science and Machine Learning
Platforms[2]. IBM Planning Analytics with Watson has been recognized as a 2021 Gartner
Peer Insights Customers' Choice in the Cloud Financial Planning
& Analysis market. IBM OpenPages with Watson is recognized as a Leader in the 2020
Gartner Magic Quadrant for IT Risk Management for the fifth
time[3].
This news builds on IBM's long-standing commitment to the
ethical, responsible stewardship of AI. In addition to applying its
Principles of Trust and Transparency across the full scope of
global operations, IBM recently joined forces to launch
the Global AI Action Alliance focused on guiding the
responsible policies, practices, and partnerships needed to ensure
global cooperation on the design, development and use of AI.
For more information on today's announcement, please visit:
https://www.ibm.com/blogs/watson/2021/04/ibm-watson-trust-data-models-processes
Gartner Disclaimer
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any vendor, product or service depicted in its research
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Gartner Peer Insights Customers' Choice constitute the
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represent the views of, nor constitute an endorsement by, Gartner
or its affiliates.
About IBM Watson
Watson is IBM's AI technology for business,
helping organizations to better predict and shape future outcomes,
automate complex processes, and optimize employees' time.
Watson has evolved from an IBM
Research project, to experimentation, to a scaled, open set of
products that run anywhere. With more than 40,000 client
engagements, Watson is being
applied by leading global brands across a variety of industries to
transform how people work. To learn more, visit:
https://www.ibm.com/watson.
1IBM and Morning Consult: Scaling AI, Not Risks:
Removing Trust as a Barrier to AI Adoption, [Dec. 2019]
2 Source: Gartner, "Magic Quadrant for Data Science and
Machine Learning Platforms," Peter
Krensky, Carlie Idoine, Erick
Brethenoux, Pieter den Hamer,
Farhan Choudhary, Afraz Jaffri, Shubhangi
Vashisth, [March 1, 2021]
3 Source: Gartner, "Magic Quadrant for IT Risk
Management," Khushbu Pratap,
Brent Predovich, Claude Mandy, [August 11,
2020]
Forward-Looking and Cautionary Statements
IBM's statements regarding its plans, directions, and intent are
subject to change or withdrawal without notice at IBM's sole
discretion. Information regarding potential future products is
intended to outline our general product direction and it should not
be relied on in making a purchasing decision. The information
mentioned regarding potential future products is not a commitment,
promise, or legal obligation to deliver any material, code or
functionality. Information about potential future products may not
be incorporated into any contract. The development, release, and
timing of any future features or functionality described for our
products remains at our sole discretion.
Media Contact:
Sarah Murphy
IBM Media Relations
srmurphy@us.ibm.com
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SOURCE IBM