Random Thoughts: Insurance Geekiness

Last year, I started to put up some random links and thoughts, which will continue unregularly. Today, it’s Watson edition:

• A Japanese company will start selling an empathetic robot called Pepper this summer. If that wasn’t cool enough, they are adding Watson technology to enable it to learn and provide more realistic, human-like responses. Pepper is still physically limited – so I guess it’s not necessary to implement the Three Laws of Robotics yet – but for it to work in an insurance agency as an assistant with near unlimited knowledge and a grasp for probability (i.e. on the spot risk check) would be a nice start.
• Speaking of Watson, Ken Jennings had an interesting talk at TEDx about the Jeopardy! journey and additional musing about the future of technology:
  
  I am assuming you saw the original Watson Jeopardy! shows, if not, definitely check it out.
• As Watson is entering several industries, it has interesting application possibilities in insurance. Insurance-Canada.ca recently hosted a Webinar with some interesting industry speakers about some of the possible implementations – check out the replay here.
• In case you’re wondering about the headline – here’s my head talking about geeks, insurance and the Internet of Things: