Ten years ago, the artificial intelligence system International Business Machine Corp challenged people at the “Jeopardy! ”
The feat was supposed to call for a shift in the way machines provided answers to big and small questions, opening up new revenue streams for Big Blue in particular and Big Tech in general. Main target: health care, a trillion-dollar industry that many say is plagued by inefficiencies that some tech advocates say AI could cure.
A decade later, that promise has been lacking in truth. IBM is now investigating the sale of Watson Health, a unit whose pavilion product was expected to help doctors diagnose and treat cancer.
IBM spent several billions of dollars on construction to build Watson. Former IBM chief executive John Kelly once visited the campaign as a “bet the field” move. It didn’t last as long as the hype. Watson Health has been struggling for market share in the U.S. and overseas and is currently unprofitable.
Alphabet Inc.’s Google DeepMind unit, which developed the famous Go-Play algorithm that went after a human player in 2016, launched several health care-related initiatives with a focus on harmful diseases. It has also lost money in recent years and has become entrenched in privacy concerns over how health data was being collected.