Dear Jenna, X-Air, Blick and WeatherCat technology observers,
It is worth remembering the apparent reason why IBM bought the Weather Channel in the first place. At the time rumors circulated that IBM bought the Weather Channel precisely to get access to the Weather Underground data. The claim was that they intended to use their Watson artificial intelligence system to make more accurate forecasts than are presently possible using existing models.
Having a BA in Physics and having started PhD intending to use artificial intelligence to develop educational software, I find all of this extremely curious. The existing computational models for sort term weather and long term climate forecasts are attempts to actually model the atmosphere. This is extremely difficult to do, but at least seems like a plausible way to forecast the future state of the atmosphere. At least as described, IBM was apparently trying to throw the Weather Underground data directly at the Watson system without any modeling of the physics. No matter how sophisticated Watson may be, attempting to "learn" from so much data is likely to overwhelm the technology. The alternative is even more difficult, attempt to build a hybrid AI physical model of the atmosphere has never been done. Either way, it hardly looks like the sort of profit-making venture that companies really need in our tough economy.
If this rumor wasn't the ultimate motivation for IBM's acquisition of the Weather Channel, could anything else represent a better match? After all, the Weather Channel is a cable TV channel and IBM stands for International Business Machines. These businesses could hardly be more different economically or culturally. Admittedly I'm far on the outside of such matters, but it does trouble me that major corporations somehow manage to make decisions that seem absurd when viewed from just about any angle.
Oh well, Edouard