Despite its potential to revolutionize a number of industries, many of Watson’s achievements have been nothing more than a pretty cool, somewhat interesting way to use an artificial intelligence, such as playing Jeopardy or telling people if their emails sound too aggressive. IBM’s most recent Watson expansion falls in the category as well, as the company is looking to help people succeed at… fantasy football. I’m not even all that surprised, this is America after all.
After conquering Jeopardy, polishing people’s office memos, improving city services, and helping nab tax cheaters, IBM Watson is setting its artificial mind to the much more important task of embarrassing your fantasy football friends. This season, IBM will provide Watson’s services to Edge Up Sports, a fantasy football research app that’s currently under development. While there’s no shortage of research tools available to fantasy obsessives already, Edge Up claims to provide deeper insights into factors like the weather, team travel, and the matchup at hand. Watson’s intelligence will be an additional offering on top of these basic services, analyzing the sentiments of a wide range of football experts. So instead of reading a dozen articles to figure out if Marshawn Lynch has a shot at 100 yards and a touchdown, Watson will sum up the general consensus for you. Watson will even look at the history of each analyst to figure if they tend to be optimistic or pessimistic.
