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Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

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Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#51

Post by brightball »

throwaway111991 wrote: post #2

I was at the CogX artificial intelligence summit in London a couple of weeks ago, and IBM were there in full force. I made several rounds around all of the stalls, and sat at the bar for a couple of hours with friends, and the whole time I could see the IBM stall, with 4-5 people there, WATSON plastered everywhere and nobody talking to them. So I went over. I got talking to one of their technical people there, I am h…

A couple of psychologist made an algorithm on punch cards to diagnose stomach cancer in the 1960s more accurately than doctors. Grab a copy of The Undoing Project.

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#52

Post by abtinf »

ingenuous2 wrote: post #45
abtinf wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclosure: I work in developer advocacy at IBM. Thank you for sharing your view. If you'd like to talk more about how we can better message our offerings, please feel free to reach out. I'd love to learn more about the kinds of problems you are trying to solve. Edit: yes, I know, this is a bland response to the parent. But change needs feedback. Edit 2: thanks matt4077

I think before you ask for help from a community like this, you should either offer a reasonable promise that you can deliver better results, or offer to pay people for their time. IBM's Watson, for me, has been so much marketing fluff that it's in the Oracle class of "only bought by people who don't know better". A profitable business line, but not a problem solving business line.

I can make a reasonable promise that any feedback I get will be put in front of the right people.

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#53

Post by whitepoplar »

save_ferris wrote: post #12

I don't think this isn't limited to IBM, my partner's PE firm recently hired a small consulting group touting a "revolutionary, AI-driven" real-estate analysis product that has zero AI whatsoever. It's basically a custom spreadsheet tool that they're claiming to be building AI on top of as they consume company data, but for a few hundred grand per year, they have a basic CRUD app on Azure with a reporting tool using…

could you share the name of the company offering this real-estate analysis product?

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#54

Post by maxxxxx »

throwaway9980 wrote: post #3

IBM vastly over promises with their marketing. It is so frustrating to have to answer questions from the CEO about why we don't solve all our problems with magic beans from IBM's Watson. I understand that this is what they want. They want to drive executives' interest in the product, but I believe they do so at the expense of their goodwill with the tech community. Am I the only one who cringes when these ads air? Ed…

This certainly works with the IT department and top executives in my company. I have seen Watson mentioned in a ton of presentations and they are all super excited about it. In the last 12 months I have been trying to find out about anything concrete they are doing but so far nothing. It seems all talk.

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#55

Post by mark_l_watson »

In the last 6 weeks, I have been called by two reporters (Wall Street Journal and Reuters) for background on AI. I talked with the Journal reporter for about an hour, covering 'everything.' However, the Reuters reporter only wanted to talk about IBM Watson - we just had a short talk.

I have seen a lot of negative press on Watson, but really, it can be evaluated like any other API to see if it meets your needs.

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#56

Post by CurtMonash »

abtinf wrote: post #27
throwaway9980 wrote: post #3

IBM vastly over promises with their marketing. It is so frustrating to have to answer questions from the CEO about why we don't solve all our problems with magic beans from IBM's Watson. I understand that this is what they want. They want to drive executives' interest in the product, but I believe they do so at the expense of their goodwill with the tech community. Am I the only one who cringes when these ads air? Ed…

Disclosure: I work in developer advocacy at IBM. Thank you for sharing your view. If you'd like to talk more about how we can better message our offerings, please feel free to reach out. I'd love to learn more about the kinds of problems you are trying to solve. Edit: yes, I know, this is a bland response to the parent. But change needs feedback. Edit 2: thanks matt4077

My recommendation: Find another job.

Dishonesty is ESSENTIAL to IBM Watson marketing. Specifically, IBM has taken a whole lot of different technologies and rebranded them as "Watson", so as to pretend that the Jeopardy-playing system is actually a big practical deal.

IBM's reputation over the decades earns it the benefit of the doubt on bold technical initiatives ... for a while. But when IBM doesn't deliver, the benefit of the doubt runs out. And that's happened now with Watson.

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#57

Post by abtinf »

ingenuous2 wrote: post #50
abtinf wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the jobs I've held, getting asked by the CEO to look into a technology means there is some underlying problem or opportunity.

Agreed. But the community of problem solvers does not frequently overlap with the community of people willing to listen to salesmen. Yes, there are opportunities. No, I do not believe IBM could solve mine, because of the overpromise, underdeliver. I would only speak with a sales team, or a PM, if my boss ordered me to.

I'm not in sales, nor is my performance measured on any sales-related metric.

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#58

Post by Spooky23 »

jimmaswell wrote: post #18
throwaway111991 wrote: post #2

I was at the CogX artificial intelligence summit in London a couple of weeks ago, and IBM were there in full force. I made several rounds around all of the stalls, and sat at the bar for a couple of hours with friends, and the whole time I could see the IBM stall, with 4-5 people there, WATSON plastered everywhere and nobody talking to them. So I went over. I got talking to one of their technical people there, I am h…

Kind of reminds me of these frustrating anti-nuclear advocates that set up a table with some posters at my old college one day. They couldn't give me any real answers why I should support solar wind and hydro over nuclear besides nuclear being "old technology". They had no response to the fact that this state isn't ideal for large scale use of any of the green alternatives or that much more deaths directly result fro…

It sounds like you trolled some kids passionate about a subject to argue for a technology and industry that you don't really understand.

Were you prepared to compare the plight of the solar installers who fall off of roofs and get injured to the construction workers injured on the job during various nuclear plant construction projects?

Did you count the various victims at Chernobyl? (Epidemiologists project at least 4,000 deaths)

Were you ready to justify why states like New York needs to subsidize nuclear plants with $500M in direct savings because they are not economically viable to operate anymore?

In your case, those kids were being nice.

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#59

Post by daxfohl »

> and let’s be real, things would look much worse if Google, Microsoft and Facebook were added to this table

Umm, so add them? And Nvidia, Intel, Baidu, Uber, Tesla? Anybody else? That single chart would actually be more interesting than the entirety of this article.

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#60

Post by blazespin »

_delirium wrote: post #17
throwaway9980 wrote: post #3

IBM vastly over promises with their marketing. It is so frustrating to have to answer questions from the CEO about why we don't solve all our problems with magic beans from IBM's Watson. I understand that this is what they want. They want to drive executives' interest in the product, but I believe they do so at the expense of their goodwill with the tech community. Am I the only one who cringes when these ads air? Ed…

"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 so…

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