IBM chief comes to Baltimore to encourage computer skills
Above: A student at Digital Harbor High and Sam Palmisano, head of IBM, hear about the exploits of “Watson,” the supercomputer.
About 100 middle-school students gathered yesterday at Digital Harbor High School in south Baltimore to watch videos on the development of technology and engage in mock games with a pretend “Watson,” IBM’s supercomputer that recently triumphed over humans on the TV game show Jeopardy!
The students formed the backdrop to an appearance by IBM’s president and CEO Samuel J. Palmisano, a native of Baltimore, as part of IBM’s worldwide celebration of its 100th birthday today. The kids were nearly outnumbered by IBM employees.
Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Baltimore City Schools Chief Andrés Alonso joined Palmisano in the classroom and sat among the students. Afterward, the three spoke at a press conference hailing the importance of computer education.
Rawlings-Blake said to Palmisano, “I didn’t realize you had that Baltimore connection. Now I know. We should be looking for more partnerships.” She praised the company for motivating and inspiring students during the presentation.
Palmisano, wearing a blue shirt and suit to commemorate “Big Blue” (IBM’s nickname), said the videos and interactive quiz show were aimed at showing how the latest technology can rival a human’s ability to think and can spur further innovations.
Digital Harbor students listen to a presentation by IBM volunteers – and pose a question. (Photo by Noelle Wigginton)
“It’s really about getting kids excited about these kinds of areas [math and science]. We saw a lot of those kids today” he said, “and it was great because they’re important to our future. [For] a stable economic society, they have to have these skills.”
“Quite honestly, business and government has the responsibility to prepare these kids for the future and not the past,” he added.
Human vs. Machine
A graduate of Johns Hopkins University, Palmisano joined IBM as a salesman in 1973 and was named its CEO in 2002. He once played back-up saxophone for “The Temptations” and was offered a tryout with the Oakland Raiders as an offensive lineman.
Yesterday, he emphasized IBM’s collaboration with the University of Maryland’s School of Medicine, which is using Watson’s voice recognition technologies in various medical applications. This technology could enable next-generation computers to diagnose patients and become a physician’s assistant, he said.
The computer, which beat out two human champions on the television show Jeopardy! last February, was named after IBM’s founder, Thomas J. Watson.
It had access to 200 million pages of structured and unstructured content, including the full text of Wikipedia, and consistently outperformed its human opponents except when responding to questions with clues containing only a few words.
What's the best way to celebrate a "good news" event in Baltimore? A press conference, of course. Here was yesterday's with Schools Chief Andrés Alonso, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and IBM CEO Samuel J. Palmisano. (Photo by Noelle Wigginton)
Speaking of computers in classrooms, schools chief Alonso said after the news conference, “These are the times we need to prioritize what matters. What we know for sure is, if our kids don’t have access to the same things other kids are having access to, they aren’t going to have the same opportunities and growth.”
Digital Harbor High School is currently the only public information technology high school in Baltimore. It was formed in 2000 as a magnet school for students interested in careers in computers, software and programming.
Nicole Veltry-Luton, a teacher at the school, said the students at Digital Harbor “really get it” and use their learning as “a stepping stone to a university or a career.”