IBM Watson Is Just More of Everything Except Revenue
October 11, 2016
I read “IBM Watson’s CMO Predicts the Future of Data and AI.” I thought that the article would report what IBM Watson had to say about this question: “What is the future of data and AI, Watson?” Wrong. The article presents IBM’s current thinking about what its humanoids desperately want IBM Watson to become.
There was one startling omission in the article, but I will save that until the final paragraph of this mini report.
I noted several points of interest to me in the write up which is essentially an IBM wizard answering some slightly worn questions about the sprawling brand known as Watson. (Keep in mind that I know Watson as Lucene, home brew code, and acquired technologies.)
Point One: Watson understands human language. So Watson is like the film “2001” and HAL? No, here’s what the write up says Watson is:
It’s not speech recognition like Siri, not speech synthesis like Alexa, but actually understanding human languages…
Point Two: Why use IBM Watson and not some other smart system? Answer:
We’ve invested $6 billion in our idea, a third of that is dedicated to cognitive.
Point Three: IBM made a big deal about Twitter in 2014. IBM’s position:
Twitter specifically, is interesting.
You get the idea. Superficial generalizations about how capable IBM Watson is.
What’s the big omission? Revenue. Not a peep about how IBM Watson is going to generate sustainable revenue this quarter. What’s frightening to me is that the humanoid answers about Watson are sketchy. Since Watson did not answer the questions or address the topics in the title of the source article, I conclude that IBM Watson’s answers are even more sketchy.
I love that multi billion investment, however. Now about the financial payoff. Watson, any answers?
Stephen E Arnold, October 11, 2016
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
