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This is one of the many desperate moves that we will see from IBM trying to deliver on the Watson overpromise and all their rocambolesque cognitive computing. A

This is one of the many desperate moves that we will see from IBM trying to deliver on the Watson overpromise and all their rocambolesque cognitive computing. AI is a late project (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month). So adding more manpower (or brainpower) to a late software project only makes it later. Only folks poorly educated on the topic (such as Elon Musk) really believe that Watson-like AI is around the corner.

yequalsx 9y ago
I don't think it's universally true that adding more manpower to a late software project always makes it later. The Mythical Man Month takeaway is that things don't scale up linearly when adding manpower but they clearly can and often times do scale up. Imagine one person given the task of rewriting the Windows operating system in Java. This one person team won't benefit from more programmers? Of course the project will be completed faster, in this case, with more manpower.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > I don't think it's universally true that adding more manpower to a late software project always makes it later. It always results in a period of reduced progress due to drag on the existing staff to onboard the new staff; and the bigger the scale up, the longer that period where you are behind where you would have been without it is. And the more you scale up, the more you need to reorganize and build new coordination infrastructure to make use of new resources even once they are up to speed technically, which also takes time to set up and time to acclimate staff to the new organization and teams, which creates its own drag. In realistic scenarios, this pretty invariably means late project + more resources = later projects. But, sure, there are extreme situations where that wouldn't be true, but I don't think they pop up often in practice. One should be extraordinarily skeptical of any claim (or interior intuition) that the rule doesn't apply to your project.
  - yequalsx 9y ago
    What I presented was an extreme example but the point stands. Obviously things like Windows OS, iOS, etc. are projects that benefitted from an increase in manpower and this increase in manpower did not stifle development or cause delays. It is true that doubling the manpower does not double progress. It's not a linear relationship.
boxingdog 9y ago
yep, AI now is just spreedsheets on stereoids, it has nothing intelligent on it.
zxcvvcxz 9y ago
I've never believed that Musk could be so daft. I always thought he was playing up media hype ('AI so powerful, could be evil guys!') as a way to recruit young ambitious talent to his endeavors.
quincunx 9y ago
rocambolesque adj.: Suggestive of Rocambole, a character in the novels of the French author Ponson du Terrail (1829–71), renowned for his improbable and fanciful adventures; incredible, fantastic, bizarre. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/rocambolesque https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/rocambolesque

yequalsx 9y ago

I don't think it's universally true that adding more manpower to a late software project always makes it later. The Mythical Man Month takeaway is that things don't scale up linearly when adding manpower but they clearly can and often times do scale up. Imagine one person given the task of rewriting the Windows operating system in Java. This one person team won't benefit from more programmers? Of course the project will be completed faster, in this case, with more manpower.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> I don't think it's universally true that adding more manpower to a late software project always makes it later. It always results in a period of reduced progress due to drag on the existing staff to onboard the new staff; and the bigger the scale up, the longer that period where you are behind where you would have been without it is. And the more you scale up, the more you need to reorganize and build new coordination infrastructure to make use of new resources even once they are up to speed technically, which also takes time to set up and time to acclimate staff to the new organization and teams, which creates its own drag. In realistic scenarios, this pretty invariably means late project + more resources = later projects. But, sure, there are extreme situations where that wouldn't be true, but I don't think they pop up often in practice. One should be extraordinarily skeptical of any claim (or interior intuition) that the rule doesn't apply to your project.
- yequalsx 9y ago
  What I presented was an extreme example but the point stands. Obviously things like Windows OS, iOS, etc. are projects that benefitted from an increase in manpower and this increase in manpower did not stifle development or cause delays. It is true that doubling the manpower does not double progress. It's not a linear relationship.

boxingdog 9y ago

yep, AI now is just spreedsheets on stereoids, it has nothing intelligent on it.

zxcvvcxz 9y ago

I've never believed that Musk could be so daft. I always thought he was playing up media hype ('AI so powerful, could be evil guys!') as a way to recruit young ambitious talent to his endeavors.

quincunx 9y ago

rocambolesque adj.: Suggestive of Rocambole, a character in the novels of the French author Ponson du Terrail (1829–71), renowned for his improbable and fanciful adventures; incredible, fantastic, bizarre. https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/rocambolesque https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/rocambolesque