back to article AI military upstart attacked by Russian malware, Twitter fires up TensorFlow, and more

Welcome to this week's AI news bites, picking up the bits besides everything else we've written about. Big Blue's Watson Health division is apparently struggling: IBM Watson Health announced it was scaling back its business after failing to win hospital contracts. At an internal meeting IBM said that hospitals weren’t all …

  1. macjules

    Watsoff?

    “Last month, IBM Watson Health had to lay off employees from Explorys, Phytel and Truven,“

    I wonder how soon it will be before IBM move into the beer business and then try to hold an annual employee party in one of their breweries.

    1. Nick Kew
      Coat

      Re: Watsoff?

      Are you suggesting IBM move in on HP's traditional territory?

  2. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Coat

    "AI..suffers from a lack of diversity. Opening a lab in Ghana will provide more opportunities"

    Wot, no love for Nigeria?

    It is one of the most advanced African nations, with a vast army of IT literate people at its disposal*

    *Many of them members of the Royal family.

    1. anothercynic Silver badge

      Re: "AI..suffers from a lack of diversity. Opening a lab in Ghana will provide more opportunities"

      Which Royal family would that be?

      Nigeria has several tribes, all of which have a royal family...

      1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Happy

        Which Royal family would that be?

        All of them I should think.

        The emails I get often come from a "Prince Somebody or other."

    2. Destroy All Monsters Silver badge

      Re: "AI..suffers from a lack of diversity. Opening a lab in Ghana will provide more opportunities"

      Several conferences such as the Data Science Africa 2017 in Tanzania, the 2017 Deep Learning Indaba event in South Africa, and follow-on IndabaX events in 2018 shows that is already a strong and growing interest in AI in Africa.

      This is fine, but judging from the Indaba 2017 prospectus this is both the Machine Learning User Group get-together and a progressive diversity initiative. Moaning about "biases algorithms" included (yup, if statistics say that blacks are more likely to get in trouble with the law a second time, the statistics are probably right). Not Miles Bennet Dyson territory but then again, that's in the hand of the North Asians.

  3. Sanctimonious Prick
    Thumb Down

    Goodbye IBM

    IBM completely screwed up with the Australian Census, for which they were fined more than $30M for.

    IBM are no longer reliable.

    I suggest/predict that within two years, IBM will no longer be relevant in the IT world.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Goodbye IBM

      I think the Australian Bureau of Shitistics is at least as culpable for the farce as IBM - I am sure they weren't happy to stump up the cash to have the right controls in place.

      Anyway, the benefit of it was that I did not need to apply for my usual religious exemption from the idiotic exercise.

  4. JWLong

    Goodbye IBM

    IBM hasn't been relevant in years. I dumped their stock years ago when they stopped making products that had a need in the world.

    Watson has been unemployed for ever because IBM spent more time, money, and effort buying companies with stupid names like "Explorys, Phytel and Truven". When you can't sell a shit product to an overpriced industry like the Heath and Medical businesses you are doing a lot wrong.

    The company has been stripped to the bone by the board members and CEZero's so that it has nothing of value left in it's portfolio but moth's and empty toilet tissue dispensers.

    They need to put a sign at the exit of the corporate headquarters that says, "Would the last person out this door please turn out the lights".

    GE, Westinghouse, IBM, Kellogg's are nothing but name holders today. None of them produce their namesake products today. They have all licensed their products to third party manufacturing and those products are shit in value.

    Just wait until Coke and Pepsi shut down their production lines and farm out manufacturing to some Chin Flung Doo company in some third world country with no liability for anything. Our food chain/supply system is all ready contaminated to the gills and the FDA ain't got a clue what's going on (and they really don't care).

    So, hey IBM do us a favor, you and the rest of your lot of bean counter companies please just go and die. The sooner the better.

    \I feel all better now........

  5. Tigra 07
    Facepalm

    "AI research generally suffers from a lack of diversity. Opening a lab in Ghana will provide more opportunities for black engineers and for machine learning to flourish."

    I hate to break it to you but that won't be any more diverse. When hiring in the west for tech jobs is constantly harangued by accusations of not being diverse enough because the countries are predominantly white. Will we now see the same in Ghana because there's not enough white people or asians getting the jobs?

    I find the whole thing ridiculous to be honest. Let people do the jobs they want and hire them based on merit, instead of skin colour. Stop banging on about how many white/black/green people are doing which jobs.

  6. ma1010
    Joke

    Google Translate apparently works offline now on mobile phones

    "My hovercraft is full of eels."

    What?

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