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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

#131

Post by R_haterade »

heracles wrote: post #117
R_haterade wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently sat through a sales pitch for a piece of IBM software that has an intensely focused (and better) competitor. IBM's sales pitch was that 1) this particular piece of software was "central to IBM's [market niche] strategy", and 2) if we didn't go with IBM's product, we would miss out on all the interoperability with IBM's Watson that the future is going to bring. The tone veered toward fire-and-brimstone. I w…

May I ask whom the competitor was/is? We are closing on the IBM bandwagon, but I want to show that there is alternatives.

It could out me. I'd like to hang on to my job, and we're not allowed to be critical of IBM.

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#132

Post by komali2 »

RRWagner wrote: post #105
tomjakubowski wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Why not just call it "Watson Systems"?

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

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#134

Post by pgodzin »

comstock wrote: post #123
pgodzin wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a SWE at Watson Health. What do you think was so absurd about it? It definitely didn't explain the constraints and limitations well enough (it won't diagnose any problem you can have), but for the cancer scenario the segment centered on, the Watson solution is indeed able to greatly assist doctors with a task that does not scale well for them.

I think it would be useful to link to some scientific evaluation of Watson Health. I'd want to see: 0. A baseline measurement. 1. Comparison to the nearest compatible. 2. Comparison against a simple algorithm/expert system.

That's exactly what we do with all our pilot clients before we go into production. I'm not sure that IBM publishes these results after the pilot is done though.

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#135

Post by pgodzin »

agumonkey wrote: post #115
pgodzin wrote: post #31

The marketing has made it very hard to have a real conversation about IBM Watson. There is no such singular thing as "Watson". IBM offers a ML solution for health, for NLP, chatbots, etc. They all have very different capabilities and require different levels of machine learning. The marketing is BS, but most of the tech is real - if you give IBM your data, let them train a model on it, and communicate what you want,…

Good to hear from someone working on W.Health. Just yesterday I saw the latest ad. on Watson which is now promising to help Basketball recruiters spot future stars .. which is quite a let down compared to the original promises of Watson. Anyways, any way for someone outside IBM to read about the health division effort and collaborations ?

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/607965/a-reality-check-fo... was a good recent review.

The only IBM source I know of are the press releases announcing new collaborations: https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/presskit/27297.wss

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#136

Post by comstock »

pgodzin wrote: post #134
comstock wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it would be useful to link to some scientific evaluation of Watson Health. I'd want to see: 0. A baseline measurement. 1. Comparison to the nearest compatible. 2. Comparison against a simple algorithm/expert system.

That's exactly what we do with all our pilot clients before we go into production. I'm not sure that IBM publishes these results after the pilot is done though.

Then it's understandable that people would be suspicious of a puff piece on 60minutes which provides no substantive information.

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#137

Post by komali2 »

abtinf wrote: post #16
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…

I work in developer advocacy at IBM. If you would like to follow-up about your experience or to get connected with the right folks to answer you questions, please feel free to reach out to me.

These are parodies, right?

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#138

Post by 77pt77 »

zoeysaurusrex wrote: post #61
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…

I'm happy to be harsh because I've had years and years of experience dealing with IBM. Their tools are trash for the cost they want. The majority of their offerings are overengineered and prone to failure in a production setting. They are pros at selling to non-technical management, all the while IT employees get stuck dealing with the aftermath. We ended up getting stuck with the IBM version of work item management,…

>They are pros at selling to non-technical management, all the while IT employees get stuck dealing with the aftermath.

I have seen middle management say very clearly that no one was ever fired for choosing IBM.

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#139

Post by 77pt77 »

sumedh wrote: post #116
deepGem wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What perplexes me is that none of these seem to affect their services business. 39 billion in services revenues is nothing to scoff at. I mean how can a company build shitty products like this and be a world leader in services ? Do these units operate like two separate entities.

> I mean how can a company build shitty products like this and be a world leader in services Wasn't there a saying that no one got fired for buying IBM.

It's used in real life in a non joking manner.

I've seen it many times.

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#140

Post by lucaspiller »

bischofs wrote: post #111

What does IBM even do anymore? Is it some bizarre set of buildings where they just play with computers and print money? What product do they sell? Whom do they sell it to? I am genuinely curious... I have a comp sci degree and worked in different industries relating to software and have never even seen or touched any IBM tech except for those old cash registers.

I was working for a UN organisation last year and some of my work overlapped with another project that was being done by IBM. They were hired to make our web applications more secure by adding 2FA and user access control middleware, using their Websphere family of products (IIRC) and building custom integrations.

I didn't get involved much on the project, but from what I understand the developers sent to work with us were useless, the products were bad or at least poorly suited for us, and what they were going to build was a huge waste of money. (However the last point was more to do with deep organisational issues where I was working).

The main product IBM sold was 'mininising risk' which the director of our department loved - as it meant if the project failed he would have someone to take the blame other than himself. The old saying 'nobody got fired for choosing IBM' is still true.

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