IBM Joins the AI Rally With Watsonx

IBM, the tech giant, has proposed to join the AI rally as it announces Watsonx,' its new AI platform. The announcement came out at the company's annual Think conference.

This announcement has somehow created a buzz among the back-office managers of the company because they were recently told that the organization would put a hold on hiring if it finds it appropriate to replace the human force with AI in the future.

According to IBM, Watsonx will deliver tools to build AI models while providing access to pre-trained models for building codes, text, etc.

The company, however, claims that different challenges businesses face in deploying AI have motivated the launch.

The company carried out a survey where 30% of business leaders stated that they're afraid to adopt AI because of trust and transparency issues. Another 42% of participants have stated that they're not adequately assured of the privacy measures associated with generative AI.

AI may not replace managers, but the managers that use AI will replace the managers that do not.Rob Thomas, Chief Commercial Officer, IBM

IBM officials claim that Watsonx will be able to address these security concerns. It'll give users access to the right infrastructure, tools, and resources, which they can leverage to build their personalized generative AI models. Furthermore, Watsonx will allow them to upgrade and adapt available AI models using their own data.

The Enterprise Studio For AI Builders'

The company describes WatsonX as an enterprise studio for AI builders.' It's being said that this advanced platform will allow users to deploy and validate models and analyze the post-deployment progress.

Businesses can also consolidate their workforce by leveraging Watsonx.

IBM, however, doesn't stand as the pioneer when it comes to introducing users to the concept of building customized AI models. Big players like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have already launched similar platforms. Amazon's SageMaker studio, Google's Vertex AI, and Azure's Azure AI have been in the race for a while now.

However, IBM claims that none of the launched tools from other developers offer a slew of pre-trained and enterprise-centric models like the Watsonx. Moreover, unlike its competitor, it boasts a cost-efficient infrastructure.

Hugging Face will help IBM to include numerous Hugging Face-developed models, libraries, and datasets in Watsonx.

According to Dario Gil, ex-VP at IBM, the enterprise consumable AI innovation still requires a giant organization and team, and WatsonX is backed by this horizontal capability.

Presently, WatsonX will come with seven pre-trained models that businesses can use. Among them, a few are open source. To enhance Watsonx's accessibility, IBM has proposed to join hands with Hugging Face, an AI startup.

More to The Show

At the conference, the company highlighted three models. They are - fm.model.Code (for code generation), fm.Model.Geospatial (developed on NASA's climate and remote sensing data), and fm.model.NLP (a batch of LLMs).

According to IBM, the company has differentiated the models with a training data set. The said data set features different components like code, tabular data, IT events information, geospatial data, etc.

Besides Watsonx AI, IBM has announced a fit-for-purpose" data store under the Watsonx brand umbrella called Watsonx.data. This data store is expected to help streamline AI workload and regulated data.

Leveraging Watsonx.data, users can browse data via a single point of entry.

In addition, it can be automated and integrated with a company's pre-existing tools and databases.

While IBM expects its proposed data-building platform and other new tools and infrastructure will boost the company's overall financial performance while contributing significantly to the global economy, it remains to be seen whether they will be able to make a dent in the ground of reality.

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