EBay labs employs economists, machine learning and machine vision experts, data miners, naturallanguage processors and human computer interaction specialists.
In 65 short years, the humble transistor evolved into an artificial life form called Watson, a computer system that recognizes naturallanguage and, in 2011, handily defeated two former champions on the TV quiz show Jeopardy.
Now what was once was a fun computer-science experiment in naturallanguage processing is becoming a real business for IBM and Wellpoint, which is the exclusive reseller of the technology for now.