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What Next | Daily News and Analysis

What Next: TBD | Tech, power, and the future - The Downfall of One of the World's Biggest Brains

What Next | Daily News and Analysis

Slate Podcasts

News, Daily News, News Commentary

4.32.4K Ratings

🗓️ 28 January 2022

⏱️ 27 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Ten years ago, IBM made a gamble. Through a monumental advertising and PR campaign, it promised that its AI technology–Watson–would transform the health care industry as we know it. A decade and billions of dollars later, Watson Health is being sold for parts. 


What went wrong with IBM’s “moonshot?” And what does Watson’s failure tell us about the promise of AI for health care?


Guest: Casey Ross, national technology correspondent for STAT


Host: Lizzie O’Leary


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

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0:00.0

I think that the holidays feel like frozen noses. I love walking with the dog for long periods of time.

0:10.0

Hopefully it's snowing and you've got to wrap up warm. So I think a frozen nose is

0:13.6

then sweaty armpits because like you're wrapped up so warm but then you're climbing hamps

0:17.9

and heath and you get to the top and you're like and then you can see the breath

0:21.6

but then your nose is still freezing to touch.

0:25.0

Joy in every sip with red cups now back at Starbucks.

0:34.2

Now the last clue. Even a broken one of these on your wall is right twice a day.

0:39.9

Watson, what is clock? Clock is correct and with that you move up to 20,000.

0:45.5

If you know Watson at all it might be from this.

0:47.9

Jeopardy in 2011 when Watson IBM's computer system played against champions Ken Jennings and Brad

0:56.2

Rotter and one. Well, he just seen history made here on KXA in this afternoon. Watson the

1:01.8

supercomputer wiping the floor with the two greatest human champions ever to play jeopardy. Watson's

1:09.1

time on jeopardy was fun viewing but it was also a very savvy public debut of a product that IBM

1:15.8

wanted to sell. Watson, health. Just on the back of that performance and that feet it gained a

1:24.4

ton of interest in attraction from healthcare systems and others who are looking to use that

1:31.2

technology. That's Casey Ross, technology correspondent for Stat News who has been covering

1:36.4

Watson health for years. It was supposed to really change healthcare in so many different ways

1:43.8

delivering insights to hospitals about their operations to oncologists about the cancer care

1:50.5

of a patient in front of them to pharmaceutical companies about the development of drugs,

1:56.7

how to match patients with clinical trials. There were just so many different domains.

2:04.4

It sounded revolutionary but as Casey's reporting shows it never really worked.

2:09.6

And last week Watson health was essentially sold for parts. A private equity firm,

...

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