Author: Ben Lamm / Source: VentureBeat
IBM Watson’s 2011 debut stunned the world by defeating some of Jeopardy’s finest champions. Seven years later, Watson’s greatest achievement is, err, still that Jeopardy win oh so many years ago.
The Watson launch was a mass market striptease that had the world in awe of the potential of AI.
It inspired a generation of technologists to set their sites on AI. But while it helped to end the so-called “AI-winters,” it has yet to produce an enterprise-viable technology.We shouldn’t be surprised by that. Technology does what we ask it to do. Made-for-TV AI is going to make for good TV. Turning that into a practical application for business is another story.
Look at Google Glass, Oculus Rift, hoverboards, Segway, Flip video cameras. Dead, dead, dead, and super dead. Why are products with massive awareness and genuinely innovative technology failing?
The answer is pretty simple: None of them had a practical application that created value for the customer.
Google Glass was a novelty that came at the expense of the user’s dignity.
Oculus was supposed to be premium entertainment, but its ecosystem failed to entertain us.
Hoverboards and Segway lost the battle to human legs, as stubborn and practical a competitor in the transportation industry as we’ve ever seen.
Cisco killed off Flip (which it acquired in 2009) mere moments after it realized Apple had launched the iPhone in 2007. It turns out it’s impractical to carry a Flip camera with your smartphone, especially when the phone has a better camera and, you know, the ability to be a phone.
And therein lies the big problem: When you market something as a quantum leap, it better deliver massive value. In the meantime, practical applications of advanced technologies will deliver value for the investment nine times out of 10. Big businesses, in particular, like those odds.
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