A decade ago IBM built an AI system called Watson that won the quiz show Jeopardy. It was supposed to change the IT giant's fortunes. What happened?

IBM hoped to become an AI driven services company on the back of Watson. It was marketed as being a single super intelligent computer that you could ask any question. According to an article in the New York Times, IBM went straight for the hardest sector - healthcare - and failed.

Really, Watson was only ever a brand. When IBM tried to 'solve' healthcare they had all of the same problems with data quality, explainability, and culture change that others have faced. They never had any magic 'AI' behind the Watson curtain. They should have started somewhere much simpler like managing inventories or personalising marketing, more or less where they have ended up.