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IBM Has a Watson Dilemma

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Re: IBM Has a Watson Dilemma

#11

Post by gojomo »

webaholic wrote: post #6
chomp wrote: post #2

Watson isn't what investors and the general public thinks it is. It's now more or less some classifier/machine learning as a service plus a dev integration team you can hire to pull it into your codebase (which by the way, is lots of $$$) It is not difficult for anyone on HN to spend a weekend, read a machine learning book, and replicate most of Watson's functionality. It's IBM marketing at it's finest.

you are full of it. Are you sure you can replicate beating world class players on jeopardy in a weekend?

While parent post is full-of-it on the general question of replicating Watson's full bag-of-techniques against client problems in a weekend, I believe the Watson Jeopardy victory was far less impressive than it seemed.

It's a very-constrained domain, and the challenge Watson won has never been opened to scrappy teams other than IBM. I wrote up my doubts way back in 2011:

https://memesteading.com/2011/02/16/ibm-watson-overprovision...

Here in 2018, I suspect a clever focused team could make a MacBook, with current dumps of Wikipedia/Wikidata and a few other key reference materials, competitive in most Jeopardy matches in a week or two. And, with 6 months to a year, as dominant as "Watson" was against the Jeopardy champs.

Re: IBM Has a Watson Dilemma

#12

Post by whymauri »

threeseed wrote: post #10
pm90 wrote: post #7

Like much of IBM, Watson was/is a good platform for doing certain tasks, but blown completely out of proportion by IBM marketing. Not to mention that they now explicitly use it as a branding tool ("Watson Cloud", "Watson Health" etc.) On the one hand, you have Google open sourcing AI tools, courses, adding TPU-enabled machines on their cloud and using their own AI tools to do some pretty neat stuff. On the other, you…

I don't understand your point here. Google is not a competitor to IBM and so there is no "choice" to be made between the two. Sure Google has open sourced some great technologies (as have many others) but they are raw, low-level tools for Data Scientists to use. They aren't OOTB products ordinary people can use.

I thought one of Watson's main projected uses was healthcare. Isn't Google's stake in healthcare via DeepMind actually make them competitors in that sense? Unless I'm missing something here, I have not researched Watson a lot.

Re: IBM Has a Watson Dilemma

#13

Post by dmreedy »

gojomo wrote: post #11
webaholic wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you are full of it. Are you sure you can replicate beating world class players on jeopardy in a weekend?

While parent post is full-of-it on the general question of replicating Watson's full bag-of-techniques against client problems in a weekend, I believe the Watson Jeopardy victory was far less impressive than it seemed. It's a very-constrained domain, and the challenge Watson won has never been opened to scrappy teams other than IBM. I wrote up my doubts way back in 2011: https://memesteading.com/2011/02/16/ibm-watson…

I've had the pleasure of interacting with the codebase that played Jeopardy! and from where I stand, it's still one of the most impressive and beautifully-orchestrated systems I've ever seen.

You are correct in your write-up though. Wikipedia titles are super helpful, where they exist.

Re: IBM Has a Watson Dilemma

#14

Post by jarym »

So given that IBM’s only big commercial bet is (was?) Watson and it is clearly not going to drive significant revenue.. what do IBM do next?

They ballsed up cloud, they let the rather impressive DB2 wither, and their software suite is... meh.

Re: IBM Has a Watson Dilemma

#15

Post by ddmd1 »

threeseed wrote: post #10
pm90 wrote: post #7

Like much of IBM, Watson was/is a good platform for doing certain tasks, but blown completely out of proportion by IBM marketing. Not to mention that they now explicitly use it as a branding tool ("Watson Cloud", "Watson Health" etc.) On the one hand, you have Google open sourcing AI tools, courses, adding TPU-enabled machines on their cloud and using their own AI tools to do some pretty neat stuff. On the other, you…

I don't understand your point here. Google is not a competitor to IBM and so there is no "choice" to be made between the two. Sure Google has open sourced some great technologies (as have many others) but they are raw, low-level tools for Data Scientists to use. They aren't OOTB products ordinary people can use.

Google absolutely competes with IBM in the cloud hosting space and MLaaS space with offerings like ML Engine.

Re: IBM Has a Watson Dilemma

#16

Post by code4tee »

Glad to see the broader market finally catching on to the marketing fluff train that was “Watson”.

On the one hand IBM did an impressive job tapping into people’s desire for “big data stuff” as a lot of uninformed folks talked a lot about “hey we should get that Watson thing.”

On the the other hand messing with peoples lives via a bogus cancer curing machine is some messed up stuff. These Watson boondoggle projects diverted a lot of good resources that could have gone towards legit value-add research.

The whole Jeopardy thing was really cool and amazing marketing, but as anyone who tries “Watson” knows the “Watson” IBM has been trying to sell is not the Jeopardy thing.

Re: IBM Has a Watson Dilemma

#17

Post by wavefunction »

whymauri wrote: post #12
threeseed wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand your point here. Google is not a competitor to IBM and so there is no "choice" to be made between the two. Sure Google has open sourced some great technologies (as have many others) but they are raw, low-level tools for Data Scientists to use. They aren't OOTB products ordinary people can use.

I thought one of Watson's main projected uses was healthcare. Isn't Google's stake in healthcare via DeepMind actually make them competitors in that sense? Unless I'm missing something here, I have not researched Watson a lot.

They're competitors in the sense that neither are worth anything to the average medical Doctor at this point.

I don't mean this as a disparagement, merely as a dispassionate observation. Doctors need alerts about contra-indications of drugs they and their patients' other doctors have prescribed more than they need AI-derived diagnoses, for example.

Re: IBM Has a Watson Dilemma

#18

Post by notzuck »

code4tee wrote: post #16

Glad to see the broader market finally catching on to the marketing fluff train that was “Watson”. On the one hand IBM did an impressive job tapping into people’s desire for “big data stuff” as a lot of uninformed folks talked a lot about “hey we should get that Watson thing.” On the the other hand messing with peoples lives via a bogus cancer curing machine is some messed up stuff. These Watson boondoggle projects d…

What a horrible review. The cancer research isn't at all what you make it out to be. It's legitimate and does have some real proven value despite the recent backlash in certain parts of the press. It's not perfect but the advancements that have been made are significant.

It's easy to stand on the sidelines and throw rocks at other peoples efforts based on very little first hand information but please, this isn't twitter.

Re: IBM Has a Watson Dilemma

#19

Post by code4tee »

notzuck wrote: post #18
code4tee wrote: post #16

Glad to see the broader market finally catching on to the marketing fluff train that was “Watson”. On the one hand IBM did an impressive job tapping into people’s desire for “big data stuff” as a lot of uninformed folks talked a lot about “hey we should get that Watson thing.” On the the other hand messing with peoples lives via a bogus cancer curing machine is some messed up stuff. These Watson boondoggle projects d…

What a horrible review. The cancer research isn't at all what you make it out to be. It's legitimate and does have some real proven value despite the recent backlash in certain parts of the press. It's not perfect but the advancements that have been made are significant. It's easy to stand on the sidelines and throw rocks at other peoples efforts based on very little first hand information but please, this isn't twit…

Not on the sidelines, I’m on the field. That’s why I’m glad to see the reality finally getting attention. As the article says, a lot of healthcare professionals that once were onboard have distanced themselves from IBM and these projects.

Re: IBM Has a Watson Dilemma

#20

Post by davemp »

My experience with Watson is a manager asking if I had any project ideas for it because the company had “Watson time” that no one could think of a way to use. I tried to picture the chain of events necessary for the exchange to have taken place that wasn’t comical. I failed.

After being forced into ClearCase use at another company, I couldn’t help but imagine how much damage IBM sales has done to the software industry. How many inferior products have been propped up and resources drained by such dishonest sales practices and poor leadership?

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