Watson and Block: Tax Preparation and Watson
April 19, 2017
Author’s Note:
Tax season is over. I am now releasing a write up I did in the high pressure run up to tax filing day, April 18, 2017, to publish this blog post. I want to comment on one marketing play IBM used in 2016 and 2017 to make Watson its Amazon Echo or its Google Pixel. IBM has been working overtime to come up with clever, innovative, effective ways to sell Watson, a search-and-retrieval system spiced with home brew code, algorithms which make the system “smart,” acquired technology from outfits like Vivisimo, and some free and open source search software.
IBM Watson is being sold to Wall Street and stakeholders as IBM’s next, really big thing. With years of declining revenue under its belt, the marketing of Watson as “cognitive software” is different from the marketing of most other companies pitching artificial intelligence.
One unintended consequence of IBM’s saturation advertising of its Watson system is making the word “cognitive” shorthand for software magic. The primary beneficiaries of IBM’s relentless use of the word “cognitive” has been to help its competitors. IBM’s fuzziness and lack of concrete products has allowed companies with modest marketing budgets to pick up the IBM jargon and apply it to their products. Examples include the reworked Polyspot (now doing business as CustomerMatrix) and dozens of enterprise search vendors; for example, LucidWorks (Really?), Attivio, Microsoft, Sinequa, and Squirro (yep, Squirro). IBM makes it possible for competitors to slap the word cognitive on their products and compete against IBM’s Watson. I am tempted to describe IBM Watson as a “straw man,” but it is a collection of components, not a product.
Big outfits like Amazon have taken a short cut to the money machine. The Echo and Dot sell millions of units and drive sales of Amazon’s music and hard goods sales. IBM bets on a future hint of payoff; for example, Watson may deliver a “maximum refund” for an H&R Block customer. That sounds pretty enticing. My accountant, beady eyed devil if there ever were one, never talks about refunds. He sticks to questions about where I got my money and what I did with it. If anything, he is a cloud of darkness, preferring to follow the IRS rules and avoid any suggestion of my getting a deal, a refund, or a free ride.
Below is the story I wrote a month ago shortly after I spent 45 minutes chatting with three folks who worked at the H&R Block office near my home in rural Kentucky. Have fun reading.
Stephen E Arnold, April 18, 2017
IBM Watson is one of Big Blue’s strategic imperatives. I have enjoyed writing about Watson, mixing up my posts with the phrase “Watson weakly” instead of “Watson weekly.” Strategic imperatives are supposed to generate new revenue to replace the loss of old revenues. The problem IBM has to figure out how to solve is pace. Will IBM Watson and other strategic imperatives generate sustainable, substantial revenue quickly enough to keep the company’s revenue healthy.
The answer seems to be, “Maybe, but not very quickly.” According to IBM’s most recent quarterly report, Big Blue has now reported declining revenues for 20 consecutive quarters. Yep, that’s five years. Some stakeholders are patient, but IBM’s competitors are thrilled with IBM’s stratgegic imperatives. For the details of the most recent IBM financials, navigate to “IBM Sticks to Its Forecast Despite Underwhlming Results.” Kicking the can down the road is fun for a short time.
The revenue problem is masked by promises about the future. Watson, the smart software, is supposed to be a billion dollar baby who will end up with a $10 billion dollar revenue stream any day now. But IBM’s stock buybacks and massive PR campaigns have helped the company sell its vision of a bright new Big Blue. But selling software and consulting is different from selling hardware. In today’s markets, services and consulting are tough businesses. Examples of companies strugglling to gain traction against outfits like Gerson Lehrman, unemployed senior executives hungry for work, and new graduates will to do MBA chores for a pittance compete with outfits like Elastic, a search vendor which sells add ons to open source software and consulting for those who need it. IBM is trying almost everything. Still those declining revenues tell a somewhat dismal tale.
I assume you have watched the Super Bowl ads if not the game. I just watched the ads. I was surprised to see a one minute, very expensive, and somewhat ill conceived commercial for IBM Watson and H&R Block, the walk in store front tax preparer.
The Watson-Block Super Bowl ad featured this interesting image: A sled going downhill. Was this a Freudian slip about declining revenues?
Does it look to you that the sled is speeding downhill. Is this a metaphor for IBM Watson’s prospects in the tax advisory business?
One of IBM’s most visible promotions of its company-saving, revenue-gushing dreams is IBM Watson. You may have seen the Super Bowl ad about Watson providing H&R Block with a sure-fire way to kill off pesky competitors. How has that worked out for H&R Block?
HonkinNews for April 18, 2017 Now Available
April 18, 2017
From the friendly skies of rural Kentucky, this week’s HonkinNews talks about the benefits of a visit to Louisville, Kentucky. Injuries are possible. HonkinNews report that a mid tier consulting firm has decided that people do not search. When you look for information online, you really “insight.” Yep, that sounds pretty crazy to Beyond Search as well. Even more startling are the companies the thrashing consulting firm identifies as leaders in “insight.” Spoiler: Recorded Future, Palantir Technologies, and other companies of this ilk are not included. Why? Insight means enterprise search. HonkinNews also take a quick look at what we call the “high school science club disorder” or HSSCD. Although not on the list of official medical conditions, we report on some striking parallels between Stephen E Arnold’s high school science club in 1958 and Google’s response to allegations from the US Department of Labor about Google’s compensation plan. From the Beyond Alexa service, HonkinNews recycles some information about must-use Amazon Alexa skills. Fancy some Eastern philosophy or words from fashionistas. You will learn what to have Alexa deliver for your auditory delight. A technological news flash about pizza adds flavor to this week’s show. You will want to use DRU to get your slice. No, DRU is not based on “drool”, although one of the Beyond Search team does droll when someone mentions pizza. DRU is a Domino Robotic Unit. Yummy. HonkinNews speculates about a rumored “new” functions for those who write using Microsoft Word. If you like Windows 10’s start menu ads, you will love LinkedIn information displayed next to that memo you are trying to finish so you can leave early. View the program to find out if Clippy will return. You can view the program here.
NB. One viewer of the program wanted to know why the program is in black and white and is pretty lousy. The reason is that we film on a Bell & Howell camera. We are in rural Kentucky, and we use what we have. Enough said. You can “insight” old fashioned eight mm film too.
Kenny Toth, April 18, 2017
HonkinNews for 4 April, 2017 Now Available
April 4, 2017
For April 4, 2017, HonkinNews digs into a shallow article about enterprise search. We did not know that enterprise search illuminates the dark corners of the Internet. We don’t believe this, but that’s why we decided to discuss this flimsy analysis. Also, Snap ephemera are now findable, which means that these gems of knowedge ot disappear quickly. We find some humor in a headhunting outfit which is promoting the name Beyond Search in interesting ways: Dead links and tie ups in Brazil, for example. ISPs can now sell user data. We quote a former FTC big wig who is a master of alliteration. Of course, big ISPs promise not to sell user data. Never. Ever. We discuss a company with technology able to figure out a person’s interests and match ads to that individual. The ads will arrive via an Alexa device or a wheelchair. Finally we illustrate the Google way of answering direct questions. You can find the program at this link.
Kenny Toth, April 4, 2017
IBM Out-Watsons Watson PR
March 15, 2017
I noted that IBM can store data in an atom. I marveled at IBM’s helping with arthritis research. I withdrew my life savings to bet on IBM Watson’s predictions for the next big thing. Wow. Busy that Watson smart software is. Versatile too.
What I found interesting is that IBM has announced that it has knocked the cover off the ball with its speech recognition capabilities. Too bad Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Nuance think they know how to perform this Star Trek-type function trick. Clueless pretenders if the IBM assertion is accurate.
Navigate to another IBM “real” journalistic revelation in “Why IBM’s Speech Recognition Breakthrough Maters for AI and IoT.”
I learned:
IBM recently announced that its speech recognition system achieved an industry record of 5.5% word error rate, coming closer to human parity.
Yep, an announcement. Remember. Google’s speech recognition is on lots of mobile phones. Dear old Microsoft, despite the missteps of Tay, landed a deal with the dazed and confused UK National Health Service. And Amazon. Well, there is that Alexa Echo and Dot product line. And IBM? Well, an announcement.
The write up reveals that a blog post makes clear that IBM is improving its speech recognition. As proof, the write up points out that IBM’s error rate declined. IBM does that with its revenues, so maybe this is a characteristic of the Big Blue machine.
But I particularly enjoyed this bit of analysis:
Reaching human-level performance in AI tasks such as speech or object recognition remains a scientific challenge, according to Yoshua Bengio, leader of the University of Montreal’s Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA) Lab, as quoted in the blog post. Standard benchmarks do not always reveal the variations and complexities of real data, he added. “For example, different data sets can be more or less sensitive to different aspects of the task, and the results depend crucially on how human performance is evaluated, for example using skilled professional transcribers in the case of speech recognition,” Bengio said.
Isn’t this the outfit which Microsoft relies upon for some of its speech wizardry. So what exactly is IBM doing? Let’s ask Alexa?
Stephen E Arnold, March 15, 2017
Amazon, the Walmart of Digital Selling, Is into Smart Software Too
March 3, 2017
Big day. Amazon, the company that reports its financials in a remarkably weird way, is now explaining that it is a player in the smart software poker game. Navigate to “Welcome to the New AWS AI Blog!” Now the DWs (digital Walmarters) are explaining that artificial intelligence, was, is, and will be the future of the mall killer.
How many AI and smart software services does the Main Street shopping pillager offer. Check out this chart:
There are “engines.” One can pay money to use this devices. Some of the names are semi familiar like TensorFlow; others may be unfamiliar to the shopping crowd; for instance, CNTK. Love that acronym.
There are complete platforms. Some of these are open sourcey, but when vendor lock in is one of the possible consequences of the cloud approach to software, one never knows, does one? I like Amazon machine learning and “EMR”, an acronym which means a variant of Google’s old school batch processing thing. Yikes! Batch processing in a zip zip world of real time flows.
The third layer is Amazon AI services. I noted the inclusion of Lex, Amazon’s home companion. Alexa, what’s the weather?
The idea is that Amazon is every bit as robust as some of the other smart software outfits. No less an authority than Mark Cuban is pressed into duty as an objective supporter of Amazon’s freshly repackaged collection of oddments.
The blog, I assume, will explain how those in search of smart software can order up machine learning along with an order of dog food.
Who should be nervous about Amazon’s repackaging of its industry leading cloud services? I would suggest that cross town pal Microsoft might be checking out Amazon’s AI chart. Then, of course, there are the wizards at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. I wonder of Amazon’s services will be of use to HPE when it meets up with Autonomy in court later this year. And the number one outfit likely to be consulting tea leaves for hints of Amazon’s AI impact? Good old IBM. Fresh from another quarter of declining revenues and more IBM Watson hyperbole, IBM might be wondering, “How did a digital Walmart get from used CDs to AI?”
And the Google? My hunch is that the Google may note Amazon’s blog. But the company is in the ad business, has been, and probably will be for the foreseeable future. Amazon is too diversified to the Google to see many parallels.
My hunch is that Amazon does see search as vulnerable. Another Main Street? Perhaps?
Stephen E Arnold, March 3, 2017
Beyond Search Evolution Underway
March 1, 2017
Today we are introducing changes to Beyond Search. We are approaching 10 years of daily publication and in that time enterprise search and content processing has undergone a significant change. Enterprise search is no longer exciting. In fact, a number of companies have pivoted to different services. Search has become for many a utility at best or a ho-hum solution. Web search has degraded to the lowest common denominator of generating revenue via ads. The handful of “objective” Web search systems walk a perilous cliff edge between paying their bills and providing an index to a subset of publicly accessible content. We will continue to cover important items in Beyond Search, but we are shifting our focus to products and services related to voice-centric information access.
The Beyond Alexa blog is in its formative stages. We have started to flow content into this new service. It will include Augmentext-type stories (for information follow the link), special articles, short videos on voice related topics, and inclusions (a fancy word for sponsored content or in my lingo, ads with information value). The idea is that Alexa has become an interesting product niche, but the impact of voice-related information access is now changing rapidly. Frankly it is more dynamic than the decades old keyword search business.
You can view the alpha version of Beyond Alexa at this link. As we ramp up the service, we will have other announcements about the service. We passed the 15,000 article milestone in Beyond Search last year. Since early 2008, we have tracked the keyword centric approach to finding and making sense of information. Our changing focus reflects the fact that I wrote about years ago in Searcher Magazine. Keyword search linked to a keyboard, if not dead, was headed for marginalization.
That’s why we want to explore “beyond” Alexa, Amazon’s odd little voice activated box which does a bang up job of providing the temperature and almost friction free impulse shopping. We think there’s more “beyond” Alexa. We want to explore the new world of ubiquitous and Teflon-slick information access.
Stephen E Arnold, March 1, 2017
Search Like Star Trek: The Next Frontier
February 28, 2017
I enjoy the “next frontier”-type article about search and retrieval. Consider “The Next Frontier of Internet and Search,” a write up in the estimable “real” journalism site Huffington Post. As I read the article, I heard “Scotty, give me more power.” I thought I heard 20 somethings shouting, “Aye, aye, captain.”
The write up told me, “Search is an ev3ryday part of our lives.” Yeah, maybe in some demographics and geo-political areas. In others, search is associated with finding food and water. But I get the idea. The author, Gianpiero Lotito of FacilityLive is talking about people with computing devices, an interest in information like finding a pizza, and the wherewithal to pay the fees for zip zip connectivity.
And the future? I learned:
he future of search appears to be in the algorithms behind the technology.
I understand algorithms applied to search and content processing. Since humans are expensive beasties, numerical recipes are definitely the go to way to perform many tasks. For indexing, humans fact checking, curating, and indexing textual information. The math does not work the way some expect when algorithms are applied to images and other rich media. Hey, sorry about that false drop in the face recognition program used by Interpol.
I loved this explanation of keyword search:
The difference among the search types is that: the keyword search only picks out the words that it thinks are relevant; the natural language search is closer to how the human brain processes information; the human language search that we practice is the exact matching between questions and answers as it happens in interactions between human beings.
This is as fascinating as the fake information about Boolean being a probabilistic method. What happened to string matching and good old truncation? The truism about people asking questions is intriguing as well. I wonder how many mobile users ask questions like, “Do manifolds apply to information spaces?” or “What is the chemistry allowing multi-layer ion deposition to take place?”
Yeah, right.
The write up drags in the Internet of Things. Talk to one’s Alexa or one’s thermostat via Google Home. That’s sort of natural language; for example, Alexa, play Elvis.
Here’s the paragraph I highlighted in NLP crazy red:
Ultimately, what the future holds is unknown, as the amount of time that we spend online increases, and technology becomes an innate part of our lives. It is expected that the desktop versions of search engines that we have become accustomed to will start to copy their mobile counterparts by embracing new methods and techniques like the human language search approach, thus providing accurate results. Fortunately these shifts are already being witnessed within the business sphere, and we can expect to see them being offered to the rest of society within a number of years, if not sooner.
Okay. No one knows the future. But we do know the past. There is little indication that mobile search will “copy” desktop search. Desktop search is a bit like digging in an archeological pit on Cyprus: Fun, particularly for the students and maybe a professor or two. For the locals, there often is a different perception of the diggers.
There are shifts in “the business sphere.” Those shifts are toward monopolistic, choice limited solutions. Users of these search systems are unaware of content filtering and lack the training to work around the advertising centric systems.
I will just sit here in Harrod’s Creek and let the future arrive courtesy of a company like FacilityLive, an outfit engaged in changing Internet searching so I can find exactly what I need. Yeah, right.
Stephen E Arnold, February 28, 2017
A Famed Author Talks about Semantic Search
February 24, 2017
I read “An Interview with Semantic Search and SEO Expert David Amerland.” Darned fascinating. I enjoyed the content marketing aspect of the write up. I also found the explanation of semantic search intriguing as well.
This is the famed author. Note the biceps and the wrist gizmos.
The background of the “famed author” is, according to the write up:
David Amerland, a chemical engineer turned semantic search and SEO expert, is a famed author, speaker and business journalist. He has been instrumental in helping startups as well as multinational brands like Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson, BOSCH, etc. create their SMM and SEO strategies. Davis writes for high-profile magazines and media organizations such as Forbes, Social Media Today, Imassera and journalism.co.uk. He is also part of the faculty in Rutgers University, and is a strategic advisor for Darebee.com.
Darebee.com is a workout site. Since I don’t workout, I was unaware of the site. You can explore it at Darebee.com. I think the name means that a person can “dare to be muscular” or “date to be physically imposing.” I ran a query for Darebee.com on Giburu, Mojeek, and Unbubble. I learned that the name “Darebee” does come up in the index. However, the pointers in Unbubble are interesting because the links identify other sites which are using the “darebee” string to get traffic. Here’s the Unbubble results screen for my query “darebee.”
What I found interesting is the system administrator for Darebee.com is none other than David Amerland, whose email is listed in the Whois record as david@amerland.co.uk. Darebee is apparently a part of Amerland Enterprises Ltd. in Hertfordshire, UK. The traffic graph for Darebee.com is listed by Alexa. It shows about 26,000 “visitors” per month which is at variance with the monthly traffic data of 3.2 million on W3Snoop.com.
When I see this type of search result, I wonder if the sites have been working overtime to spoof the relevance components of Web search and retrieval systems.
I noted these points in the interview which appeared in the prestigious site Kamkash.com.
On relevance: Data makes zero sense if you can’t find what you want very quickly and then understand what you are looking for.
On semantic search’s definition: Semantic search essentially is trying to understand at a very nuanced level, and then it is trying to give us the best possible answer to our query at that nuanced level of our demands or our intent.
On Boolean search: Boolean search essentially looks at something probabilistically.
On Google’s RankBrain: [Google RankBrain] has nothing to do with ranking.
On participating in Google Plus: Google+ actually allows you to be pervasively enough very real in a very digital environment where we are synchronously connected with lot of people from all over the world and yet the connection feels very…very real in terms of that.
I find these statements interesting.
Pinterest Offers the Impulse Shopper a Slice of Wonderfulness
February 20, 2017
How about point-and-click impulse buying? Sound good? Pinterest has merged looking at pictures with spending money for stuff.
Navigate to “Pinterest’s New ‘Lens’ IDs Objects and Helps You Buy Them.” I know that I spend hours looking at pictures on Pinterest. When I see wedding snapshots and notice a pair of shoes to die for, I can buy them with a click… almost. My hunch is that some children may find Pinterest buying as easy as Alexa Echo and Dot buying.
I learned:
[Pinterest] announced a new feature called Lens, which will enable people to snap a picture of an item inside the Pinterest app. The app will then suggest objects it thinks are related. Think Shazam but for objects, not music. Surfacing the products will make it easier for people to take action, according to Pinterest. That could include everything from making a purchase to cooking a meal.
One of Pinterest’s wizards (Evan Sharp) allegedly said:
“Sometimes you spot something out in the world that looks interesting, but when you try to search for it online later, words fail you.” The new technology, Sharp said, “is capable of seeing the world the way you do.”
Isn’t the consumerization of no word search a life saver? Now I need a new gown to complement my size 11 triple E high heels. There’s a bourbon tasting in Harrod’s Creek next week, and I have to be a trend setter before we go squirrel hunting.
Stephen E Arnold, February 20, 2017
Who Owns What AI Outfit?
February 13, 2017
Yep, there is a crazy logo graphic. However, you will find a chart I found useful. Navigate to “The Race For AI: Google, Twitter, Intel, Apple In A Rush To Grab Artificial Intelligence Startups.” Look for the subhead “Major Acquirers In Artificial Intelligence Since 2011.” Google was a gobbler of smart software companies. There were three surprises on the list:
- Yahoot (sorry I meant Yabba Dabba Hoot, er, Yahoo) acquired some AI smarts while it was shopping itself, ignoring security problems, and making management history.
- Amazon, the outfit with the Echo gizmo, snagged a couple of companies. What happens if Alexa gets smarter? Answer: More pain for Apple, Google, and Microsoft. These are three companies unable to create a new product category which generates buzz while selling laundry detergent.
- Twitter seems to be making a bit of an effort to become more than the amplifier of trumpet music.
Interesting run down. Now about that crazy chart which I find unreadable. Here you go:
Nifty, eh?
Stephen E Arnold, February 13, 2017
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