Ten years ago, Watson, the artificial intelligence system of International Business Machine Corp., got people engaged during the quiz show “Jeopardy!”
The performance was supposed to announce a shift in the way machines dished out answers to big and small questions, which would open up new revenue streams for Big Blue specifically and Big Tech in general. A key target: healthcare, a trillion-dollar industry that many people say is riddled with inefficiencies that, according to technology proponents, can cure AI.
A decade later, reality did not live up to this promise. IBM is now investigating the sale of Watson Health, a unit whose market product was supposed to help doctors diagnose and cure cancer.
IBM has spent several billion dollars on acquisitions to build Watson. Former general manager of IBM John Kelly once described the initiative as a ‘bet the ranch’ move. It did not live up to the hype. Watson Health has struggled to gain market share in the US and abroad and is currently not profitable.
The Google DeepMind unit of Alphabet Inc., which in 2016 developed a Go-playing algorithm that overcame a leading human player, later launched several healthcare-related initiatives focused on chronic conditions. It has also lost money over the past few years and has had privacy issues with how health data was collected.