Artificial intelligence (AI) is everywhere you turn nowadays. AI can be a great help in any field of work, from digital art to social media influencing. One company in particular has just rejoined the AI competition, an organization that’s become a household name for anyone with ties to the business world. That company is IBM.
What Is IBM?
Let’s start by examining IBM’s history and major contributions to the business world.
IBM’s Beginnings
IBM (International Business Machines Corporation) is a technology company that provides services across over 170 countries. IBM was founded in 1911 and was originally named the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (CTR). In 1924, the name was changed to IBM, and it has since become one of the most renowned informational technology companies in the world.
IBM is famous the world over for its hardware and software products, such as networking supplies, computer monitors, and storage systems. In addition to their products, IBM also offers services for various aspects of business and technology, ranging from data analytics to cloud computing.
This article will touch on one topic in particular: IBM’s newest AI model, Watsonx.
What Is Watsonx?
Watsonx is IBM’s new AI and data platform, equipped with a set of artificial intelligence assistants that help you learn how to effectively use the power of AI to optimize your business. Watsonx is comprised of three key components, which include:
- Watsonx.ai: A studio used for designing new artificial intelligence models and developing machine learning
- Watsonx.data: A database built on a large open-data architecture
- Watsonx.governance: Tools that help accelerate AI processes while maintaining correctness
Below, we’ll highlight Watsonx’s key features, organized by component.
Watsonx.ai
Watsonx.ai was created to give AI developers control over various preexisting LLMs (e.g., IBM’s Granite series) to improve their performance. Watsonx.ai models are trained in Natural Language Processing applications and can quickly answer questions, process large datasets, generate text, and more.
Watsonx.data
Watsonx.data mainly focuses on clientele. The feature was created to help streamline work processes and address some of the main issues that occur within AI workloads, whether they be large, high in cost, or overly complex.
Watsonx.data simplifies data access by obtaining it from one centralized entry point rather than multiple. In this regard, Watsonx.data speeds up data extraction while still maintaining the utmost level of security and protection.
Watsonx.governance
This platform keeps those in the AI creation industry in check by helping them remain compliant with the ever-changing standards and guidelines of AI development. Watsonx.governance studies developers’ initiatives and oversees compliance to ensure their AI creations follow the guidelines for model creation today.
Benefits of Watsonx
- Watsonx is capable of working in conjunction with multiple AI models, such as IBM’s Granite series, Facebook’s LLaMA-2 model, and various models created by Hugging Face,
- IBM’s Watsonx can integrate an enterprise’s AI workloads into various forms of hybrid-cloud stacks.
- Watsonx, like all other IBM models, puts user security first, protecting against third-party attacks.
Watsonx Features
IBM Watsonx includes some of the most efficient and intelligent features on the market. Let’s review some of the most useful ones.
Prompt Lab
AI developers can use the Prompt Lab to work with foundation models and engineer prompts. Users can also use foundation models in the Lab using Freeform, Structured Mode, or Chat. This lets you observe which configurations work best in tending to NLP tasks, such as text classification and content generation.
Tuning Studio
Give your foundation models a tune-up in the Tuning Studio to achieve their optimal efficiency and accuracy. This method lets you adapt models to brand-new tasks in an affordable way while still maintaining their peak performance.
Flows Engine
IBM Watsonx.ai flows engine helps you identify ways to make development processes less time-consuming without sacrificing your models’ accuracy. This feature makes applications available in the cloud, which is accessed through SDKs (software development kits) and API calls. From here, applications can be introduced to various existing architectures. You can use this feature to introduce new methods for tasks, such as RAG (retrieval-augmented generation) patterns for customer service.
MLOps and Data Science
This feature equips you with everything you need to automatically build machine-learning models. AI lifecycles can be completely automated with MLOps’ wide range of APIs, databases, and SDKs.
Increase Your Company’s Efficiency
Watsonx.ai can help you build sophisticated foundation models, complete with the capability to answer questions. The model’s unique natural language processing uses RAG to double down on speed and capability. With Watsonx.ai, customers won’t be left with unanswered questions for long periods, and you’ll see a major boost in employee productivity. Moreover, developers and other business heads can also make important decisions faster while still mitigating potential risks.
Using RAG patterns, Watsonx optimizes enterprise searching by improving the accuracy and relevance of similar-language searches. The model can produce accurate, updated information for employees so they can continue to work uninterrupted with data-driven methods.
Optimize Customer Support
Maintaining customer support has never been easier than with IBM’s Watsonx. The model features intelligent AI-driven chatbots that use RAG patterns to tend to customers’ every inquiry and need. This feature allows your employees to stay focused on the more important tasks at hand.
What’s more, Watsonx chatbots answer customer questions intuitively using RAG patterns, as well as engaging with them in a more natural manner than other AI models. The RAG patterns included in Watsonx’s make-up ensure customers will have a pleasant experience with each inquiry they make.
Improve Employee Onboarding
The idea of onboarding new employees can be rather off-putting at times, considering all the training needed to get them up to date with your processes and gather all of their important data. Watsonx can help speed up this process to an outstanding degree by using LLMs to sync relevant employee data to your organization’s database.
In addition, employees will no longer have to wait around for their questions to be answered. Watsonx’s conversational search can quickly and accurately aid new employees in accessing information that will leave them feeling confident in their new positions.
Enhance Your Business’ Productivity
Onboarding isn’t the only area that’s improved by using Watsonx. Users can access accurate knowledge and specific datasets, documents, manuals, product details, and more using this AI model. This improves not only their productivity but also their accuracy. In short, Watsonx is your one-stop shop for streamlining workflow and taking some of the pressure off your employees.
Foundation Models
As previously stated, IBM Watsonx can function with various AI foundation models. Here, we’ll analyze each of these models and what distinguishes them.
IBM Granite Series
Granite 13b chat: This chat model is best suited for general dialogue uses, such as chat and virtual agent applications (e.g., customer service).
Granite 13b instruct: If you’re looking for accurate assistance with finance tasks, look no further than Granite 13b instruct. This model is highly trained in collecting and analyzing financial data.
Granite 20 multilingual: Granite 20 multilingual is designed to analyze and generate text in five popularly spoken languages.
Granite Japanese: The Granite Japanese AI model was created to accurately carry out language tasks in Japanese.
Embedding Models
IBM embedding models are designed to perform RAG patterns and optimize search and document comparison. These models include:
Slate-125m-english-rtvr: Output dimension: 768
Slate-30m-english-rtvr: Output dimension: 384
IBM Granite: Cost-Effective Foundation Models
The IBM Granite foundation model is extremely competitively priced, especially considering its sophisticated capabilities. Granite also has a smaller infrastructure requirement and includes a user-friendly toolkit that allows you to customize your model and integrate any applications necessary.
Big Names Trust Watsonx
IBM Watsonx is trusted by some of the largest organizations in the world to power their AI adaptation and keep their businesses running smoothly. Here are just a few examples of well-known groups that rely on IBM Watsonx:
- NatWest (FKA Royal Bank of Scotland): NatWest trusts Watsonx to simplify the typically difficult process of home buying for customers. NatWest was able to develop a reliable, simple solution for home-buying customers that provided them with all the accurate, updated information they needed to feel confident in purchasing their new homes.
- USTA; US Open: In the summer of 2023, the USTA put its trust in IBM Watsonx to bring the best possible digital experience of the US Open to viewers around the world. They were able to create AI models that turned data into insights and content on the event’s website, as well as provide accurate AI Commentary for match highlight clips.
Experience the Future of AI Today
IBM has been trusted with bringing the most innovative technologies to businesses around the world for decades – and Watsonx is no exception. With the power to help streamline your business and keep customers satisfied with every interaction and inquiry, it’s hard to find an AI model that compares to IBM Watsonx. Optimize your AI business practices, boost productivity, and train top-notch employees today with IBM Watsonx.
