IBM: Watson Wizards Available for a New Job?
May 28, 2018
I know that newspapers do real “news.” I know I worked for a reasonably good newspaper. I, therefore, assume that the information is true in the story “Some IBM Watson Employees Said They Were Laid Off Thursday.” The Thursday for those who have been on a “faire le pont” is May 24, 2018.
The write up states:
IBM told some employees in the United States and other countries on Thursday that they were being laid off. The news was reported on websites, which cited social media and Internet posts by IBM employees.
IBM also seems to be taking the reduction in force approach to success by nuking some of the Big Blue team in its health unit. (See “‘Ugly Day:’ IBM Laying Off Workers in Watson Health Group, Including Triangle.”)
I noted this statement in the Cleveland write up:
Since 2012, the Cleveland Clinic has collaborated with IBM on electronic medical records and other tools employing Watson, IBM’s supercomputer. The Clinic and IBM Watson Health have worked together to identify new cancer treatments, improve electronic medical records and medical student education, and look at the adoption of genomic-based medicine.
The issue may relate to several facets of Watson:
- Partners do not have a good grasp of the time and effort required to create questions which Watson is expected to answer. High powered smart people are okay with five minute conversations with an IBM Watson engineer, but extend those chats to a couple of hours over weeks, then the Watson thing is not the time saver some hoped
- Watson, like other smart systems, works within a tightly bounded domain. As new issues arise, questions by users cannot be answered in a way that is “spontaneously helpful.” The reason is that Watson and similar systems are just processing queries. if one does not know what one does not know, asking and answering questions can range from general to naive to dead wrong in my experience
- Watson and similar systems are inevitably compared to Google’s ability to locate a pizza restaurant as one drives a van in an unfamiliar locale. Watson does not work like Google.
Toss in the efficiency of using one’s experience or asking a colleague, and Watson gets in the way. Like many smart systems, users do not want to become expert Watson or similar system users. The smart system is supposed to or is expected to provide answers a person can use.
The problem with the Watson approach is that it is old fashioned search. A user has to figure out from a list of results or outputs what’s what. Contrast that to next generation information access systems which provide an answer.
IBM owns technology which performs in a more intelligent and useful way than the Watson solution.
Why IBM chased the same dream that cratered many firms with key word search technology has intrigued me. Was it the crazy idea that marketing would make search work? IBM Watson seems to be to be a potpourri of home brew code, acquired metasearch technology like Vivisimio, and jacking in open source software.
What distinguished it was the hope that marketing would make Watson into a billion dollar business.
It seems as if that dream has suffered a setback. One weird consequence is the use of the word “cognitive.” Vendors worldwide describe their systems as “cognitive search.”
From my point of view, search and retrieval is a utility. One cannot perform digital work without finding a file, content, or some other digital artifact.
No matter how many “governance” experts, how many “search” experts, how many MBAs, how many content management experts, how many information professionals want search to be the next big thing—search is still a utility. Forget this when one dreams of billions in revenue, and there is a disconnect between dreams and reality.
Effective “search” is not a single method or system. Effective search is not just smart software. Effective search is not a buzzword like “cognitive” or “artificial intelligence.”
Finding information and getting useful “answers” requires multiple tools and considerable thought.
My hunch is that the apparent problems with Watson “health” foreshadow even more severe changes for the game show winners, its true believers, and the floundering experts who chant “cognitive” at every opportunity.
Search is difficult, and in my decades of work in information access, I have not found the promised land. Silver bullets, digital bags of garlic, and unicorn dreams have not made information access a walk in the park.
Cognitive? Baloney. Remember. Television programs like Jeopardy do what’s called post production. A flawed cancer treatment may not afford this luxury. Winning a game show is TV. Sorry, IBM. Watson’s business is reality which may make a great business school case study.
Stephen E Arnold, May 28, 2018
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