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IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

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Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehh...I get why tech people are suspect of Palantir but they're just disrupting other government contractors. And from my limited experience working with the government, they absolutely need / want / rely on having companies hold their hand as they insist on doing things the hard, slow, and very custom way.

Because of Thiel's lack of ethics and his support for the political far right?

The company is like a perfect storm of bad actors from horseshoe theory; The actual day to day CEO of palantir is Marxist theorist.

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#622

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you check the Disclosures section of your article? Are there any drug companies NOT included there? Like it or not, private companies fund the vast majority of medical research in the U.S., and any doctor who wants to stay up to date cannot (and should not) ignore it all. The authors have no conflict of interest to declare, but declare lecture honoraria or consulting fees as follows: T.U., Bayer, Boehringer Ingel…

I did see that. I don't see that as a reason to doubt the recommendations of this particular article. I thought we were talking about direct marketing by pharmaceutical company representatives by the way. It is of course impossible to separate modern medicine from the pharmaceutical industry since many therapies depend directly on them. It's still the doctor's job to figure out which medicines are actually good and w…

Why is "direct marketing" (drug reps) verboten but an article paid for by the same company is legitimate? What if the reason for the drug rep's visit is to bring a copy of the article to the doctor?

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#623
post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Deep Blue and Watson aren’t the same thing. Deep Blue was a chess computer from the 90s — and it was not the first chess computer, so regardless of whether you consider computer chess to be part of AI, the answer is no.

It's a shame we never got a cross of Deep Blue and Battle Chess. Make those chess masters fight for their lives.

In fact, forget the chessboards.

Just make them chessmasters square it off in the ring.

Chessmaster Deathmatch Season 1 Episode 1: Kasparov vs. Fisher

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#624

I could be mistaken because it’s been a while, but I read that Watson’s diagnostic capabilities turned out to be mostly marketing and that eventually IBM ended up hiring teams of doctors to process the diagnosis requests that were coming into Watson.

Like in Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age with the on-demand voice actors. I wonder if that was a lack of imagination about what AI will become, or if it was prescience that AI will turn out to be cost ineffective or not capable for most uses.

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#625
post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM is famous for charging people for the privilege of talking to them, even if you're trying to sell them something. This strategy makes sense if you consider that even in it's heyday Watson was 95% data science consulting firm and 5% actual valuable technology. I really think Watson is one of the biggest tech marketing bamboozles of the 21st century. Through Jeopardy they really had a segment of the business world…

Deep Blue preceded this. They had specialty equipment for crunching chess moves. Really excellent hype machine. I liked the documentary about it: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0379296/

Alternatively, there's a great Deep Blue documentary by Fredrik Knudsen on YouTube

https://youtu.be/HwF229U2ba8

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are just a contracting company making money off billing the government hourly for their employees time. It’s a horrible business.

Sounds like an awesome business if you're getting the money.

Not really assuming they are the prime contractor all the value is in the contracts and those are time limited before being re-competed lose all your contracts and your business value goes to zero because there is no IP like a Google or a Microsoft would have that is at the core of the value of the company.

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#627
post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kindah like Palantir

Ehh...I get why tech people are suspect of Palantir but they're just disrupting other government contractors. And from my limited experience working with the government, they absolutely need / want / rely on having companies hold their hand as they insist on doing things the hard, slow, and very custom way.

I feel like with this comment, the word "disrupting" has officially jumped shark and lost any and all meaning.

Palantir isn't "disrupting" government contractors. It is a government contractor, țhe old-fashioned kind, at that, and nothing more.

And people aren't suspect of Palantir. People dislike Palantir because its government contracts are shady and boring (they're all about efficiently tracking people), but they pretend to be a "saving the world with tech" startup with such enthusiasm you'd think they put the Kool-Aid into the water coolers.

Unsurprisingly, XXI century Stasi trying to look hip to recruit the tech talent give off nothing but "how do you do, fellow kids" kind of vibes.

Disclaimer: interviewed for Palantir. They thought I could be a fit. Must have not been using their own software to vet candidates back then.

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#628
post #547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a shame we never got a cross of Deep Blue and Battle Chess. Make those chess masters fight for their lives.

In fact, forget the chessboards. Just make them chessmasters square it off in the ring. Chessmaster Deathmatch Season 1 Episode 1: Kasparov vs. Fisher

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#629
post #6

There should be a way to bet (short) against “projects” or products, not the whole company. When they hyped about Watson Health, I “knew” it will fail.

being cynical is easy because most things fail, the challenge is in identifying winners early or identifying losers after they’ve had some measure of success.

[deleted]

Re: IBM’s Watson Health is sold off in parts

#630
post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

640$, lol My entire wardrobe costs less than that, and no, I am not lying. It must be nice to have enough money to spend on such luxury. Is it really that much better than a $10 t-shirt?

I have multiple articles of clothing that cost more than that. I’m baffled as to why anyone would want a keyboard that costs more than $100. To each his own.

The keyboardio keyboard I'm typing on (A Model 1) puts substantially less stress on my hands and wrists than any other keyboard I've used. As someone who has had repetitive stress pain in my wrists, I consider it - well, not beyond price, but certainly worth a few hundred dollars when it avoids surgery and enables me to pursue a HIGHLY lucrative profession full time. Each person's hands are different, so maybe you do fine with an inexpensive keyboard, and my keyboard won't suit everyone, but it's a fairly straightforward explanation the way I see it.
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