![]() ![]() IBM’s television ads included playful chats Watson had with Serena Williams and Bob Dylan. An IBM report called it “the future of knowing.” The potential uses, IBM suggested, were boundless, from spotting new market opportunities to tackling cancer and climate change. IBM poured many millions of dollars in the next few years into promoting Watson as a benevolent digital assistant that would help hospitals and farms as well as offices and factories. Ferrucci, who left IBM the following year. “It wasn’t the marketing message,” recalled Mr. ![]() His explanation got a polite hearing from business colleagues, but little more. It might well fail a second-grade reading comprehension test. It was not an all-purpose answer box ready to take on the commercial world, he said. “Already,” IBM declared in an advertisement the day after the Watson victory, “we are exploring ways to apply Watson skills to the rich, varied language of health care, finance, law and academia.”īut inside the company, the star scientist behind Watson had a warning: Beware what you promise.ĭavid Ferrucci, the scientist, explained that Watson was engineered to identify word patterns and predict correct answers for the trivia game. ![]() ![]() This was only the beginning of a technological revolution about to sweep through society, the company pledged. Its Watson supercomputer had just trounced Ken Jennings, the best human “Jeopardy!” player ever, showcasing the power of artificial intelligence. A decade ago, IBM’s public confidence was unmistakable. ![]()
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