Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check • Hacker News Board

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#271

Post by pm90 » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 4:42 PM UTC

squeaky-clean wrote: post #261

bradley-holt wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for IBM as a Developer Advocate, though my opinions here are my own. One of my goals as a Developer Advocate is to represent the shift in buying power from "non-technical management" (as you described it) to individual developers and other technical staff. If those who have to use or have to integrate with the software are a part of the decision making process, then I believe that this will result in better qu…

This message has just as little substance as the other IBM employee's comment. Care to share any real examples of what > However, I think you'll see this shift towards a developer-focused mindset happening more-and-more within IBM over the next few years. means? In a discussion about not trusting IBM's marketing, you can't simply say "I hear you and it will get better, trust me."

What exactly do you expect him to say? Gimme a break.

I don't work in the same role so I only know things from a 10,000 ft view. But a lot of orgs that IBM works with have inane bureaucratic structures with their in house devs pretty much at the bottom of the food chain, or in an "IT department". All decisions on using tech tools are made by "higher ups" a lot of whom have 0 technical background. We're trying to change this culture to one where devs get to make those decisions AFAIK.

Disclosure: IBM dev, but not a Developer Advocate.

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#272

Post by bradley-holt » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 5:09 PM UTC

squeaky-clean wrote: post #261

bradley-holt wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work for IBM as a Developer Advocate, though my opinions here are my own. One of my goals as a Developer Advocate is to represent the shift in buying power from "non-technical management" (as you described it) to individual developers and other technical staff. If those who have to use or have to integrate with the software are a part of the decision making process, then I believe that this will result in better qu…

This message has just as little substance as the other IBM employee's comment. Care to share any real examples of what > However, I think you'll see this shift towards a developer-focused mindset happening more-and-more within IBM over the next few years. means? In a discussion about not trusting IBM's marketing, you can't simply say "I hear you and it will get better, trust me."

It's not really up to IBM whether or not this shift towards more developer influence happens. IBM can either embrace this shift and benefit from it, or it can reject it and pretend it's not happening. Personally, I hope that IBM continues to accept and embrace this shift (which I am seeing many indications of). I hope that IBM continues to become more-and-more relevant to developers, but the proof is in the pudding.

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#273

Post by sumoboy » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 5:24 PM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #271

squeaky-clean wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This message has just as little substance as the other IBM employee's comment. Care to share any real examples of what > However, I think you'll see this shift towards a developer-focused mindset happening more-and-more within IBM over the next few years. means? In a discussion about not trusting IBM's marketing, you can't simply say "I hear you and it will get better, trust me."

What exactly do you expect him to say? Gimme a break. I don't work in the same role so I only know things from a 10,000 ft view. But a lot of orgs that IBM works with have inane bureaucratic structures with their in house devs pretty much at the bottom of the food chain, or in an "IT department". All decisions on using tech tools are made by "higher ups" a lot of whom have 0 technical background. We're trying to chan…

Nothing, it's a corporate identity problem. IBM has alot of organizations and many have good people who advocate developer tools and build products. Then you have the dark side with marketing and global services, where promises are never met and costs are beyond. Someone at the top made the decision the choose IBM, right or wrong, technical or not, they chose. I've been on both sides, and yeah 6 years in IBM global services watching the wheels spin. I've had technical decisions yanked from under me because my CTO was convinced by IBM marketing it was wrong after they failed proof of concepts. Companies have too many choices to build tech and as a developer, advocate or whatever you know there is always a better path. Especially without an IBM product.

IBM was always unique, could sell you sfw, hdw, hosting, resources, and finance the whole thing. Some business as leaders never really adapt to change because management is stupid (blockbuster, radio shack, blackberry, etc.). IBM had so many chances to compete with Amazon and they failed. Watson is no more than a deflection in the marketplace that masks the real problems from within.

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#274

Post by squeaky-clean » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 5:34 PM UTC

pm90 wrote: post #271

squeaky-clean wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This message has just as little substance as the other IBM employee's comment. Care to share any real examples of what > However, I think you'll see this shift towards a developer-focused mindset happening more-and-more within IBM over the next few years. means? In a discussion about not trusting IBM's marketing, you can't simply say "I hear you and it will get better, trust me."

What exactly do you expect him to say? Gimme a break. I don't work in the same role so I only know things from a 10,000 ft view. But a lot of orgs that IBM works with have inane bureaucratic structures with their in house devs pretty much at the bottom of the food chain, or in an "IT department". All decisions on using tech tools are made by "higher ups" a lot of whom have 0 technical background. We're trying to chan…

> What exactly do you expect him to say? Gimme a break.

If you can't provide any useful comments, then nothing. What they're saying contributes absolutely nothing to the conversation. Maybe say you'll stop selling non-existent features to executives for starters? I don't appreciate HN becoming an advertising ground to name-drop IBM without any real talking points, please provide some sort of real discussion.

> We're trying to change this culture to one where devs get to make those decisions AFAIK.

Ok, but again how? Or I guess in other words, I don't believe you.

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#275

Post by mahyarm » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 5:39 PM UTC

taneq wrote: post #164

zoeysaurusrex wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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,…

> The majority of their offerings are overengineered and prone to failure in a production setting. What do you mean by 'over engineered' in this context? The usual way I've seen that term used would imply 'reliable but more expensive than necessary' rather than 'unreliable'.

In software it sometimes means overcomplicated for the scope that delivers little value but high cost in usage due to the complexity.

Think J2EE and their xml config files.

Or using hadoop and kubernetes when a sqllite db on digital ocean will do

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#276

Post by staofbur » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 6:57 PM UTC

odammit wrote: post #262

staofbur wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in about 1999, I was working for a big corporate and one of our Oracle admins lost her shit and had a meltdown, think it was around 8i era. She just got up and walked out shouting "fuck this fucking shit, I quit". This was on a freshly delivered HP N-Class HPUX box and they just couldn't get it to run after a month of going back and forth between HP and Oracle. I bumped into her last year at Ansible Fest London…

When I get issues were vendors point fingers at each other I three way call them, tell them what's up, hit mute, go get a coffee, and let them figure it out.

We did that. They were still finger pointing two hours later.

Legal guys said it wasn't worth suing them because we'd have to pay up then or lose the support contract.

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#277

Post by ben_jones » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 7:14 PM UTC

pgodzin wrote: post #112

UnquietTinkerer wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the 60 Minutes segment was just marketing copy handed to them by IBM (how else could they talk for 20 minutes about cutting-edge ML without mentioning Google or Amazon at all?). Watson is introduced as "an AI" - singular - designed to play Jeopardy and then, after he wins, nobly re-purposed to medicine. Charlie Rose even says at one point that "they taught Watson to diagnose cancer", implying that it was the…

Google and Amazon were presumably left out because the segment was in the context of the healthcare field. I don't think DeepMind's healthcare initiatives were very mature at that point. I agree the language is problematic for non-technical viewers, but at the same time these are difficult concepts to explain to non-technical people, and explain the details of what it can't do is obviously much less compelling than f…

IIRC the segment was followed by a self-driving car piece at Carnegie Mellon. If thats true then it was a clearly a general A.I. / M.L. piece. I've seen this episode twice and its also possible that a month ago it was re-aired alongside other content.

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#278

Post by reality_hacker » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 7:15 PM UTC

blueyes wrote: post #110

frik wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> main open-source AI frameworks Do you mean UIMA, GATE? What else? These are frameworks comparable with Watson (at least the original thing, not the PR fuzz).

I was actually thinking of the main deep-learning/RL frameworks: TensorFlow, Keras, Theano, Torch, MxNet, Chainer, Caffe. That's where the action is. And if you're talking about AI today, you need to be talking about deep neural networks.

This seems like another PR hype :-)

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#279

Post by totalZero » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 7:16 PM UTC

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…

"Magic Beans" is accurate. Not sure if you've seen an IBM presentation covering Watson at an investor conference, but it's pretty much entirely hand waving and hocus pocus.

Re: Jefferies gives IBM Watson a Wall Street reality check

#280

Post by Spooky23 » Fri, Jul 14, 2017, 7:40 PM UTC

jimmaswell wrote: post #192

Spooky23 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

If they were so passionate then they should've known more. It was likely just something done as part of a class assignment. Sure, I don't understand nuclear perfectly - it's their job to convince me of their platform and that involves educating. Yes, I'd say solar was still more dangerous if it resulted in more deaths per kWh. The context was the US so I was talking about statistics in the realm of US safety standard…

> Yes, I'd say solar was still more dangerous if it resulted in more deaths per kWh.

That's a statistic that inherently favors nuclear because:

- It focuses death vs. injury.

- It doesn't normalize for states with tough regulation of falls. Is it reasonable to attribute shoddy labor practices with an energy source? Injuries will be lower in states like New York because employers have 100% liability for falls, and insurance carriers require safety measures.

- It compares installation of solar panels to operational run state for nuclear.

- There are no reliable statistics re: deaths and injuries for construction or operational workers building nuclear plants 40-50 years ago.

An apples to apples comparison that was meaningful would be "Build / Installation Injuries per kWh of Rated Capacity". For operational comparison something like "Injuries per kWh of Generated Capacity".

It's actually a hard comparison that requires some judgement, as operationally a large professionally managed system like a nuclear plant is a low risk, high impact profile for injury and death. Distributed, unmanaged solar generation is likely going to generate more incidents (accidents, transformer fires, etc) but have a lower (and scoped) impact.