There are multiple reports this morning that IBM is making Watson, that smart AI computer system who kicked some "Jeopardy" ass a few years back, the centerpiece in the company's new $1 billion business unit.
And why should you care? Let's go to Forbes to tell the story!
IBM says it plans to spend over $1 billion on the new unit, which already includes over 2,000 employees, in the next several years, out of the new 51 Astor Place. Mike Rhodin will head up the group, which the company hopes will help it reach a $20 billion revenue projection for its big data and analytics services by 2015.
The announcement of the new unit and its headquarters in ‘Silicon Alley’ is for a simple reason: to find some positive momentum for IBM within CEO Ginni Rometty’s 2015 roadmap, while showing techies in New York that IBM can be cool, the company hopes.
Here's the official Watson website with more details on the company's new 51 Astor Place space.
Perhaps 51 Astor Place developer Edward Minskoff will have the joint fully leased by the end of this month after all.
And say — do artificially intelligent computer systems like tuna melts?
Updated:
Reaction from Twitter...
.@evgrieve Wait...what? I thought @KenJennings was moving in. This is completely different.
— 51 Astor Place (@51deathstar) January 9, 2014
I B Mostly leased.
ReplyDeleteHmmm, the "Deathstar" tag is all the more appropriate!
ReplyDeleteHa ha, THAT's how IBM intends to show the tech world that it's *cool*? By moving into the Death Star?
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting news, more interested in what happens to the retail though...
ReplyDeleteIBM also stands for Intense Bowel Movement, which is what it used to feel like when using their machines. Here are a few other things IBM stands for:
ReplyDeleteIBM: I Believe in Memorex
IBM: Idiots Built Me
IBM: Inferior But Marketable
IBM: I've Been Mislead
IBM: It's Better Manually
IBM: I Blame Microsoft
IBM: I Bought Macintosh
IBM: I've Been Mugged
IBM: Idiot Biscuit Men
IBM: Identical Blue Men
IBM: Idiotic Bit Masher
IBM: Idiots Become Managers
IBM: Incompatible Business Machines
IBM: Incredibly Boring Machine
IBM: Infernal Bloody Monopoly
IBM: Institute of Black Magic
IBM: Internal Beaurocratic Mess
IBM: International Brotherhood of Magicians
IBM: Intolerant of Beards and Mustaches
IBM: It'll Be Messy
IBM: It's Backwards, Man
IBM: Itty Bitty Morons
IBM: It Barely Moves
IBM: I Buy Mainframes
^
ReplyDeleteZing?
Moving into a hideous building that's incongruous to its surroundings, smack dab in the middle of a neighborhood that's had a failed re-branding as "Midtown South" sounds like an excellent way for IBM to reset the narrative on their momentum!
ReplyDeleteTell me when Subway - Eat Fresh! moves in.
Concerns about this move go beyond NYC.....
ReplyDeleteTechnocrats takin' over, kiddies.....combine IBM's Watson move here with recent bombastic-totalitarian push on the "Internet Of Things" BigBrotherConnectivity at CES......with "thought-controlled" computers/screens....selling it to us as "convenient" and/or "cool"......
......thinking there's room for a new blog......GLO(bal)Grieve.
Is there where IBM will build the doppelgänger automatons that will replace the longtime EV residents who will be served as fro-yo at Soylent Green™ in the Death Star's retail space?
ReplyDeleteWatson? Wasn't that Tom Hanks' beachball?
ReplyDeleteI welcome our robot overlord, er...wait.
ReplyDeleteIBM --
ReplyDeleteIn Biscuit's Memory
I.Biscuits.Me.
can Watson remove all the fro-yo shops and bring back Viva and 7A?
ReplyDeleteHey, that website's time-lapse video must have been done a week ago when there was the post on the filming of 51 Astor Place! I think the vantage point of the cameras is exactly where the pictures of those lifts were.
ReplyDelete@ anon 4:11
ReplyDeleteYes! I was thinking that too... I didn't have a chance to poke around that site too much just yet...
how long until Watson creates Skynet? And until Skynet starts to learn at a geometric rate?
ReplyDeleteDeathstar building may turn out to be too aptly named...
watson is the future - it will turn us into good little lemmings. doctors will no longer diagnose, they will turn to watson.
ReplyDeletelife will be a series of recipies - everything will be a logarithm.
thinking will be discouraged.
1984 has come and gone.
watson is here.
> other things IBM stands for:
ReplyDeletethe original one is 'itsy bitsy machines'.
I-)