Watson the Shopping Assistant

A GigaOM piece just brought to my attention.  The idea of using a cognitive system to  solve problems was part of a direction we looked at in the late 80s during the hype for  artificial intelligence and expert systems.  One idea that came up often was to use expert systems to provide engagement with the shopper.  A successful project that came out of this idea was the 'Tide Stain Detective', which lived through many forms, and still exists as an App: The Tide Stain Brain.   IBM's intelligent agent infrastructure, Watson,  has similarities, including the ability to link search, logical reasoning and a natural language interface.  But takes it much more deeply in complexity than we did.  It is nice to see how now, twenty years later, IBM is making these applications more practical.   A more intelligent shopping assistant is a direction to examine.   We look forward to future cognitive systems that cover many human interactions.   Will cover more about this idea.