There's nothing ironic about it. They invested only in the marketing of AI, but not in the serious R&D of it, pretty sure internally they never believed in their own AIs. Plus they got the publicity benefit from Watson, which is important for a consulting company.
IBM had / has an army of sales types running around trying to insert Watson into health care, always reminded me of the Dick Jones character from Robocop trying to pedal the fundamentally flawed ED-209:
"I had a guaranteed military sale with ED209! Renovation program! Spare parts for 25 years! Who cares if it worked or not!"
Such an ethically questionable decision, trying to push unproven / non-functional tech into life or death decision making.
They were trying to insert Watson into everything. I used to work at a company that worked with building management systems and we had Watson sales people all over our senior managers trying to get 'collaboration' projects going.
Not usually in this habit, but really needed to commend you bringing in not only Robocop, not just stopping with Dick Jones, but including his quote as well. This really made my day.
Signed,
A fan of Robocop as dystopic corporatocracy preview
