Ten years ago, the Watson artificial intelligence system from International Business Machine Corp. outperformed humans in the “Jeopardy!” question and answer program
The feat was supposed to herald a change in the way machines answered big and small questions, opening up new revenue streams for Big Blue specifically and Big Tech in general. An important target: health, a trillion-dollar industry that many say is overwhelmed with inefficiencies that some technology advocates say AI could cure.
A decade later, the reality fell short of that promise. IBM is now exploring the sale of Watson Health, a unit whose flagship product should help doctors diagnose and cure cancer.
IBM spent several billion dollars on acquisitions to build Watson. Former senior IBM executive John Kelly once praised the initiative as a “bet it all” move. It didn’t match the hype. Watson Health has been fighting for market share in the United States and abroad and is currently unprofitable.
Alphabet Inc.’s Google DeepMind unit, which developed a Go-playing algorithm that beat a champion human player in 2016, subsequently launched several health-related initiatives focusing on chronic conditions. She has also lost money in recent years and faced privacy issues about how health data was being collected.