Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

231–240 of 264 posts

Re: Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

#231

Post by de_Selby »

ploxiln wrote: post #160
stefs wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

had to deal with ibm once. we were developing an application for a customer and ibm was working on some new service for them. of course the customer insisted we use the new ibm service, even though it solved a problem we didn't have at all. the ibm product was a website to be used by end users, while our application had to pass our end users data through. so, i asked the ibm guys (via the customer) to give me the doc…

Ah such classic outsourced third-world contractor output. They are told what to do (by some PM who has no idea) and they do it. If they ever say "uh this doesn't make sense" they are cheaply replaced. I've seen some of this nonsense (though not IBM related): strncpy(dst, src, strlen(src)); dst[strlen(dst)] = '\0';

> by some PM who has no idea

This is the real problem. That PM of course wants the work done yesterday and has ego issues so even when the contractor does question it they just double down on what they originally said.

Re: Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

#232

Post by jacobush »

easytiger wrote: post #222
piva00 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? $ 1.2 billion for a failed project that in 2010 Queensland's government gave IBM a waiver? This is blatantly corrupt, why the fuck would a government give a company a waiver from their contractual responsibilities on a failed project? That's utterly insane.

If the project fails then the people who commissioned the project would be at fault, therefore these things rarely truly are considered failures

"We learned a lot along the way."

Re: Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

#233

Post by pessimizer »

randomsearch wrote: post #67
jacobsenscott wrote: post #63

Winter is coming. And none too soon. So tired of AI headlines.

It would be really great if we could somehow hold those overselling AI to account. This may be possible this time round, because we’ll have a very good record of who said what and when via the web. Without any kind of accountability, history will continue to repeat itself. How about hyperbole.com, where you can google academic researchers and industrial leaders and pull up quotes from them, dated and fact-checked. I’…

Pundits who amplify the current bullish buzzwords will never be punished, which is why they do it.

Re: Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

#234

Post by projectramo »

jonathankoren wrote: post #185
ggg9990 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a programmer. What’s so bad about it?

It doesn’t make any sense. The way a string is terminated in C is by a null character. ‘\0’ is a mnemonic. strlen() returns the length of a strong. It does this by doing a linear scan down the array until it finds the null, and the returns that index as the length. That line of code does nothing useful. It means, “scan through the array until you find a null, then write a null there.” Which is exactly what you had to…

pace @zeusk:

I thought the point was that they didn't know if the dest is long enough to copy source, so they copy as much of it as they can.

The reason for the '\0' is in the case that src is shorter than dest.

A more explicit way may be to strlen dest > src then just use lenght(src) otherwise use str(dest).

But this might actually be more efficient.

Edit: And in this case Spolsky doesn't apply because it seems the developer doesn't get to allocate the dest length.

Re: Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

#235

Post by SpecialistEMT »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #158
txsh wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you ask me, it is more likely for watsons law to be ...burn thru hundreds of millions and ultimately fail rather then the intended meaning. That’s already called Musk’s Law.

Seems like a strange name given none of Musk’s companies have failed?

In before

Re: Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

#236

Post by bhouston »

stefs wrote: post #136
ryanmcbride wrote: post #94

I've never interacted directly with IBM, but I remember about 2 years ago, they had a talk at the Akamai Edge conference about how they dealt with bloated cookies. The company I work for has the same problem so I sat in to see what their solution was. The problem they were having is that all the various IBM lines of business added so much garbage onto the client's cookie, that eventually their pages would stop loadin…

had to deal with ibm once. we were developing an application for a customer and ibm was working on some new service for them. of course the customer insisted we use the new ibm service, even though it solved a problem we didn't have at all. the ibm product was a website to be used by end users, while our application had to pass our end users data through. so, i asked the ibm guys (via the customer) to give me the doc…

It is because ibm employs ultra cheap devs in India who barely know what they are doing. Ibm made itself into a low cost low quality Indian outsourcing firm but they charge high prices. Worst of all worlds.

Re: Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

#237

Post by [deleted] »

yourapostasy wrote: post #173
bunderbunder wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. But if your marketing and product management are all focused on selling AI instead of IR, then they're not really working toward finding a way to deliver the IR value they have to the people who need it. I'd actually like to give Watson a spin for an IR problem I'm looking at, but, thanks to their hype machine being set to overdrive, they've got the thing priced in the "The Bold Leaders of the Future Creating a…

IBM BlueMix didn't have the Watson IR tech you were looking for?

[deleted]

Re: Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

#238

Post by tootie »

bluetwo wrote: post #9
cubano wrote: post #2

Isn't this just the same problem IBM has had for...well...most of my adult life? I had a contract gig at IBM Advanced Technology in Boca for about 18 months in early 2001-2002. Talk about missing the boat... I was brought in to prop up a soon-to-be-failed project for the Japanese government...basically a "Napster for Tokyo" that would allow paid-for-play C2C song sharing for customers of "the Big 5" record companies.…

Getting a nice check while doing nothing actually productive is soul crushing. Good for the short term but it's a Chinese water torture in the long run. Two years ago at their vegas conference they had a coffee shop that used AI to recommend coffee types. I thought "boy, they don't understand this technology".

I'm living this right now and I hate it so, so much.

Re: Layoffs at Watson Health Reveal IBM’s Problem with AI

#239

Post by cs702 »

jeffjose wrote: post #187
airstrike wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an MBA who browses HN, I'm torn between the two opinions

As an engineer who has an MBA from HSW, I'm even more torn.

erikpukinskis, airstrike, jeffjose: I did not criticize MBA's in general!

My comment mentioned specifically "MBA-types with only a superficial, qualitative grasp of deep learning and AI."

MBAs who understand what they're managing (and who know what they don't know) are not in that group. And BTW, I suspect most MBAs who read HN are not in that group either :-)

Post reply on HN