If Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. dominate the online space with their machine learning, deep learning and suite of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) wants to go a step further and capture both the online and offline worlds with its cognitive computing platform.
Artificial intelligence is a top priority for both business and technology leaders, and organizations globally are aggressively launching pilots to explore possibilities, Sanchit Vir Gogia, Chief Analyst and CEO of Greyhound Research, acknowledges. He believes this trend has both a near-term and long-term impact on both the CIOs and their respective organizations.
“While the relatively well known AI systems include IBM’s Watson, IPSoft’s Amelia, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and Google Assistant, our enquiries suggest that organizations are currently facing machine-learning limitations and inflexibility issues with most. IBM Watson is one of these systems where such limitations and issues have been reported—we have had our CIO customers share feedback that while IBM Watson does good justice to analytics and basic predictive modelling, Watson’s ML algorithms are very basic and they face struggles while running Big Data projects. A key question facing IBM and others is whether to sell (and charge for) AI as a stand-alone offering or sell it as part of a core product. Success of IBM Watson currently hinges on enterprise AI adoption which is currently in its early stages and (per Greyhound Research estimates) attracts less than 5% of the overall IT budget,” Gogia said. He added that while IBM is “well-poised to make a significant dent in the AI market, it needs to bring together its services, infrastructure and solutions capabilities to make Watson more relevant in today’s context. Else, players like Wipro’s Holmes and others will eat IBM’s lunch.”