So as “they” say, any PR is good PR. Right?
That’s the category of PR in which I’d suggest we place “The Great Watson Experiment” for the folks at IBM.
The Big Bluers obviously sunk a great deal of money into the multi-year quest to create a super computer that could understand the lingo and nuance that only Jeopardy‘s answers and questions deliver.
The accompanying ad campaign and three-night TV spectacle were only dwarfed in is impressiveness by the performance of Watson, the super computer itself who “man-handled” two of the show’s all-time champions including my favorite know-it-all of all time, the consistently smirking Ken Jennings.
2001's Hal
Star Trek's M5
And while it succeeded to prove the major point that a machine and kick the you know what out of a pair of humans, it fails on the PR scale for the same reason.
In some ways, getting passed by the machine is that greatest fear of all people. It is the plot for countless science fiction movies and shows. The rogue machine references have been flying around social media over the last couple of ranging from Hal of 2001 fame to M-5 who was almost responsible for the demise of the Starship Enterprise.
So while it definitely got some attention, the question is will IBM benefit from that attention since it reminded some people of their greatest fears?
Would love to hear your thoughts?
Hodges Blog 
tony
/ February 16, 2011was telling all my friends about those IBMer commercials. kept saying remember T2? glad someone else is on board. who wants to see machine beating us so easily? not me.
honestly think there will be a reaction to this giant tech push like when the naturists went into the woods and wrote their classics against the industrial revolution. problem is this time who will read about if they are not on facebook?
Alexander
/ February 16, 2011I felt like I just couldn’t be excited for Watson like I could be excited for a person. Watson cant enjoy his winnings, or even the thrill of victory. So whats the point? It seems like giving the most juicy and delicious piece of fruit at the picnic to the ants. But maybe that as I think you might be saying is a marketing error on IBMs part. After all America loved Wall.E and Johnny 5. This issue might not be that the machine is a machine but rather that it wasn’t presented in an way that allowed humans to empathize with it. Or maybe it simply wasn’t cute enough. A female friend asked the question of how it would have been received if it was given a female identity; an interesting thought, no doubt about it.
Chuck
/ February 16, 2011I think enlightened viewers looked at the results at the end of the first day’s tournament and said ‘How interesting, the machine is as good as its human competitors.’
I think the same enlightened viewers looked at the results at the end of day 2 and said: ‘Oh my, look at the margin of victory for the machine over its human competitors.’
Often times, conversations only become productive when they change from academic to practical – – cloning, stem cell research, the list goes on and on. But I think what IBM may have achieved in Watson is adding another item to the list of “challenging but important discussions that we can’t ignore anymore.”