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Artificial Intelligence: IBM Fails to Match the Watson Hype
Ginni Rometty, IBM CEO, said that the world is at an inflection point and beginning to move on “an exponential curve,” something that she called “Watson’s Law.”
In a 2017 IBM Super Bowl commercial, actor Jon Hamm said “it is one of the most powerful tools our species has created. It helps doctors fight disease. It can predict global weather patterns. It improves education for children everywhere. And now we unleash it on your taxes.”
The intentions may have been good, but Watson is failing to live up to the hype.
Chamath Palihapitiya, founder and CEO of Social Capital, said “Watson is a joke, just to be completely honest. I think what IBM is excellent at is using their sales and marketing infrastructure to convince people who have asymmetrically less knowledge to pay for something.”
Simon Alterman, a VP and lead analyst with Outsell, said that “for all of the indisputable progress and achievements the Watson program has made so far, IBM still faces one overriding challenge: to demonstrate that it is not just a technology in search of a problem. Watson is no doubt a formidable hammer, but it needs to find enough nails to prove its worth. The market is new, and its potential customers don’t yet know what a nail-shaped problem looks like.”
An IBM engineer said that “IBM Watson has great AI. It’s like having great shoes but not knowing how to walk—they have to figure out how to use it.”
Unfortunately, in June, the problems for Watson’s Healthcare initiative went too far, resulting in the layoff of nearly 70 percent of staff. Those laid off were especially previous employees of Explorys, Phytel and Truven, three $billion+ health data companies IBM had acquired.
