IBM’s Watson (Jeopardy Winner). Will Our Folks Be Replaced?

IBM's Watson beat two Jeopardy champs in answering questions this week.

Does this mean that soon computers will be able to replace people in answering questions? For us as workplace learning-and-performance professionals, does this mean we'll be doing less training of people, and more training of machines?

Probably depends on lots of things as to how soon this happens. For example, folks doing technical support probably won't be replaced as soon if the systems/equipment on which they are providing support are updated regularly or modified substantially.

Anyway, this will affect our field—indeed it is already affecting our field to some extent as computers already provide support for folks who are answering questions—but when this reaches a tipping point we'll just have to wait and see.

18 February 2011

Hello, and Welcome to My Blog!

= Will Thalheimer

I’ve been blogging since 2005.

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Mission:

To empower workplace learning-and-performance professionals to get the most from learning.

To help organizations build strategic learning and performance practices.

To bring research-inspired wisdom to the workplace learning field through my writing, speaking, workshops, evaluations, learning audits, and consulting.

The business case is clear. By utilizing the learning and performance sciences, we create more effect learning interventions, we waste less time and money on ineffective practices and learning myths, we better help our learners, and we better support our organizations.

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