David Ferrucci: Life After Watson

Thanks to Andrew for passing this along.

To the degree there was a human face of Watson, the “Jeopardy!” computer champion, it was David Ferrucci. He was the I.B.M. researcher who led the development of Watson, an artificial intelligence engine. The goateed computer scientist was always articulate and at ease in front of a camera or a microphone.

Dr. Ferrucci has left I.B.M. to join the giant hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates. And the weight of the Watson-related fame, it seems, played a role. “I was so linked to the Watson achievement, and where I.B.M. was taking it, that I felt I was almost losing my identity,” he said in a recent interview.

After Watson beat the best human Jeopardy champions in 2011, its artificial intelligence technology was directed toward new challenges, like assisting doctors in making diagnoses in a research project at the Cleveland Clinic.

Dr. Ferrucci led that next-generation Watson research as well. But he went to Bridgewater at the end of last year. Bridgewater, a private company, made no announcement of its new hire. Yet word of Dr. Ferrucci’s departure from I.B.M. has been circulating among scientists in the artificial intelligence field. And I caught up with him recently for an interview, supplemented by a lengthy e-mail he titled, “My Reflections.”

Dr. Ferrucci, 51, said he had “a great, great career” at I.B.M., spanning 20 years, and “they paid me very well.”

He said he “never imagined myself at a hedge fund,” but eventually the appeal of working in a smaller environment in an entirely new field for him — applying artificial intelligence to macroeconomic modeling — won him over.

Dr. Ferrucci said the more recent work he was doing at I.B.M., called WatsonPaths, was the direction he thought artificial intelligence research needed to go to make further advances, and it was the approach he saw Bridgewater pursuing to economic modeling.