Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

Re:Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI by ryandrake on Monday June 25, 2018 @07:27PM (#17396697)

Did the change request come complete with specific requirements on what the interface should include? Because it sounds like they produced exactly what was asked for: a JSON interface. If the requirements were poorly specified, you can’t lay all the blame on them.

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Re:Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI by gaius on Tuesday June 26, 2018 @02:13AM (#17398273)

Did the change request come complete with specific requirements

I get that you do need specs but c'mon, if you ask a plumber to fit a pipe from A to B and he uses one made out of cardboard would you think it was reasonable for him to say "well you didn't specify it had to carry water, pay me 3x as much to put it right". And then you find out that this is the first time he's even seen a pipe, but his business card says "senior plumbing expert".

You expect a basic level of competence and familiarity with the problem domain and good faith from any professional whose services you hire.

Also consider that a program is a spec, and if you are going to explicitly specify every little detail then you might as well just write the program yourself, there is literally no sane reason to put an outsourcer in the middle.

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Re:Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI by blihp on Tuesday June 26, 2018 @04:50PM (#17403875)

Unfortunately, that's not how the game works with the large services firms. The salespeople and account/project managers run the show. Their business isn't selling expertise / solutions, it's selling the maximum amount of billable hours at the highest possible margin via the illusion of expertise / solutions. (I say illusion because if you read the fine print of one of their typical contracts, there's very little actually promised other than providing warm body of type X for hourly rate of Y)

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Re:Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI by Macuyiko on Tuesday June 26, 2018 @03:29AM (#17398571)

Exactly, this is everything that I hate about requirements management and requirements-driven-development in a nutshell. Way too often it just means: "we're actually too lazy / overworked / uninterested / have targets that don't align with the long-term best outcome, so we'll just force you to write down requirements which we know can't and won't ever be complete." It's the best way to cause internal politics to fire up and projects to belly up.

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Re:Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI by manigandham on Monday June 25, 2018 @08:36PM (#17397064)

Yes you can. There's a basic level of competence in dealing with context around a request. Any decent developer or PM would know what a JSON API is supposed to be.

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Re:Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI by therealtomsmith on Monday June 25, 2018 @07:41PM (#17396786)

The act of them doing that alone shows that they either dont get it or that complexity within the organization has brought productivity to a hault. I'd assume it's the second one.

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Re:Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI by HelloNurse on Tuesday June 26, 2018 @04:43AM (#17398847)

The interface should include engineering.

A responsible developer is expected to ask insistently until the requirements make sense; whoever delivered the JSON DOM is stealing their pay, even if they did it knowingly as a joke or provocation.

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Re:Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI by piva00 on Tuesday June 26, 2018 @03:40AM (#17398606)

You are talking to humans, not programming a machine, you don't have to instruct them on each minimal detailed step to specify something, you expect agency, even more if you are paying big bucks.

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