When you use the term “ar- tificial intelligence” these days, one word comes to mind: Watson. The IBM
system may have started life as something
of a parlor trick, defeating trivia buffs in
a special “Jeopardy” game,
but according to Craig
Bedell, worldwide insurance
industry executive for IBM,
Watson is poised to be the
next great tool for insurance
carriers.
“First and foremost,
the real focus of Watson
is to harness insight in
unstructured data,” says
Bedell. “Watson isn’t
really designed to handle
numbers. That’s what BI,
predictive analytics, and so
many of the standard forms of analysis
are involved with. What IBM set out to do
with Watson was to harness information
that was constructed by humans for the
That information can be in the form
of a written document, a narrative, a
blog or, in the case of insurance carriers,
underwriter notes, broker notes, claims
adjuster notes, loss control notes, court
cases or legal findings. That information
has always been available, but there has
never been an effective way
to analyze or harness it.
Practical Uses
For example, someone
working in auto damage
assessment can look at a
photo and not just say what
type of car is pictured, but
whether it is damaged in a
particular way. Watson, explains Bedell, has the ability
to convert that information
into something consumable.
“It’s a whole suite of capabilities with
senses,” says Bedell. “We now have 28
different services that Watson can provide
insight around.”
One such area, explains Bedell, is
personality insights. You can take an
Smarter Than
THEY LOOK
There is virtually no limit to what you can teach
artificial intelligence systems such as IBM’s
Watson. The bigger issue involves whether
insurance carriers are smart enough to take
advantage of the opportunities available to them.
By Robert Regis Hyle
Craig Bedell
