Today, instead of being a shorthand for technological prowess, Watson stands out as a sobering example of the pitfalls of technological hype and hubris around A.I.
IBM DATA GENERATOR SOFTWARE
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Product people, they say, might have better understood that Watson had been custom-built for a quiz show, a powerful but limited technology. The company’s top management, current and former IBM insiders noted, was dominated until recently by executives with backgrounds in services and sales rather than technology product experts. Martin Kohn, a former chief medical scientist at IBM Research, recalled recommending using Watson for narrow “credibility demonstrations,” like more accurately predicting whether an individual will have an adverse reaction to a specific drug, rather than to recommend cancer treatments. Saxena, who is now executive chairman of Cognitive Scale, an A.I. “The challenges turned out to be far more difficult and time-consuming than anticipated,” said Mr. Manoj Saxena, a former general manager of the Watson business, said that the original objective - to do pioneering work that was good for society - was laudable. While the shares of those three have multiplied in value many times, IBM’s stock price is down more than 10 percent since Watson’s “Jeopardy!” triumph in 2011. The company trails rivals that emerged as the leaders in cloud computing and A.I. Inside IBM, Watson was thought of as a technology that could do for the company what the mainframe computer once did - provide an engine of growth and profits for years, even decades.
It was going to breathe new life into IBM - a giant company, but one dependent on its legacy products. Watson was featured on “60 Minutes.” For many people, Watson became synonymous with A.I.Īnd Watson wasn’t just going to change industries. IBM’s television ads included playful chats Watson had with Serena Williams and Bob Dylan. An IBM report called it “the future of knowing.” The potential uses, IBM suggested, were boundless, from spotting new market opportunities to tackling cancer and climate change. IBM poured many millions of dollars in the next few years into promoting Watson as a benevolent digital assistant that would help hospitals and farms as well as offices and factories.
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