Page 40 - Ekonomija i Biznis_oktomvri 2016.indd

INTERVIEW

play the quiz game of Jeopardy! In a live
television show, the machine played two
world champions and won the game.
This had never been done before, and
it represented a major historical event
in computing. Since that exhibition
match, Watson has been decomposed
into a number of cloud-based services,
which are re-composed in various ways
to build a family of cognitive systems in
many industries such as healthcare, fi-
nancial services, commerce, and educa-
tion. So, now there are many hundreds
of Watson applications, and our goal is
for every professional to have a person-
al Watson to help them do their job.

You were also leader of the Smarter
Cities initiative. What kind of initiative
is that? What is the reach of this initia-
tive, which cities could be involved?

G. Banavar: In IBM’s Smarter Cities
initiative, we help cities become more
livable and sustainable by using big
data, analytics, and a variety of sensor-
based devices. Cities are a system of
various subsystems such as transporta-
tion, public safety, healthcare, etc., and
each of these can be improved through
the use of data and digital applications.
Hundreds of cities around the world,
big and small, of all types, have been in-

I think that the most successful people will develop a “T-shaped”

profile, where they will have deep expertise in at least one area

(the vertical bar of the T) and a broad understanding of many ap-

plications of their expertise (the horizontal bar of the T)

volved. I have personally helped dozens tions in Rio?
of cities around the world to become
better cities by using big data applica- G. Banavar: We built a new city op-
tions. erations center in Rio, which the city
uses for managing its daily operations
You have been hands-on involved across more than 30 departments like
in this initiative’s project and introduc- transportation, energy, and public safe-
tion of IBM’s state of the art system ty. The operation center is responsible
in the city of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. for all cross-department coordination,
What was the outcome of the opera- but especially when there are emergen-

40 October 2016