Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

Re:Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check by _delirium on Thursday July 13, 2017 @10:20PM (#14766944)

"Watson" made more sense to me when I realized it was just a branding term for any AI-related product, API, or service offered by IBM, which vary widely in functionality. That fact is not that hidden [1], but their marketing doesn't exactly emphasize it. If you view it that way, "Watson" should just be compared against any other similarly broad AI-as-a-service offering with strengths and weaknesses, not treated as some integrated Intelligence that will solve all your problems.

[1] E.g. they're pretty open about renaming existing things to fit under the Watson brand: https://www.ibm.com/blogs/bluemix/2016/10/predictive-analyti...

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Re:Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check by jacinabox on Friday July 14, 2017 @12:47AM (#14767538)

Anyone with a passing familiarity for Watson does view it that way.

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Re:Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check by LoSboccacc on Friday July 14, 2017 @01:50AM (#14767808)

Eh this is more of a recent development. Originally it was the natural language processing and knowledge extraction engine.

That is a hard sell because requires a truckload of configuration and internal expertise to get a working product out of it, and it ever only solves only some very narrow ranges of solutions.

In typical IBM style, since they can't have a multimillion research division going in red as that would get a bunch of management in trouble, they moved more and more product under the watson name to pad up the division growth and sales numbers.

That's the point where it is now after hoarding anything internal with value. You can see more or less the same with their cloud offer.

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Re:Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check by SamBam on Friday July 14, 2017 @10:23AM (#14770007)

They may understand it in theory, but I wonder how many middle-managers still have a gut-feeling that they're hiring that "super-smart AI guy who won Jeopardy" to work for them?

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Re:Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check by blazespin on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:13PM (#14767152)

It might be more honest if they said "IBM Data AI Division."

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Re:Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check by tomjakubowski on Thursday July 13, 2017 @11:39PM (#14767274)

"IBM DAD"? :)

More seriously, do you think Microsoft would have been more honest if they'd called Windows "Microsoft Graphical Multitasking Operating System"? Or if BMW had gone with "BMW Better Performance And A Cooler Badge But It'll Cost You" instead of "BMW M"?

Brand names exist for a reason.

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Re:Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check by RRWagner on Friday July 14, 2017 @12:18AM (#14767428)

Why not just call it "Watson Systems"?

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Re:Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check by chongli on Friday July 14, 2017 @02:04AM (#14767869)

Because IBM markets to CEOs, not IT staff. They want their customers excitedly talking about Jeopardy-winning, superhuman AI at the dinner table. Technical people won't do that.

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Re:Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check by komali2 on Friday July 14, 2017 @01:07AM (#14767616)

Stop, I'm getting fucking flashbacks to our early product design meetings.

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Re:Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check by moccachino on Friday July 14, 2017 @06:25AM (#14768753)

You have more interesting meetings than I have..

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Re:Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check by dotancohen on Friday July 14, 2017 @12:56AM (#14767580)

How about: With All The Shit On Nails

Hmm, I'm having a hard time figuring out the N. Ideas?

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Re:Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check by semi-extrinsic on Friday July 14, 2017 @04:09AM (#14768330)

"With All The Shit One Needs"?

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