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Should have been IBM Tom, after legendary IBM CEO Thomas J. Watson. But perhaps they didn't want to sully his name.
by antonvs 1mo ago
Should have been IBM Tom, after legendary IBM CEO Thomas J. Watson. But perhaps they didn't want to sully his name.
- vablings 1mo agoIBM already have IBM Watson which is probably named after the CEO
- antonvs 1mo agoWell done on understanding the reference.
- vunderba 1mo agoAs somebody already mentioned, they already had a big product named after their CEO. IBM Watson was the next big thing after Deep Blue, and it went pretty viral after defeating Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter on Jeopardy back in ~2011. It was a bit of a market play and of course has since been completely upstaged by the invention of LLMs, but it still definitely got them the attention they wanted at the time. https://www.ibm.com/history/watson-jeopardy https://www.ibm.com/history/watson-jeopardy
- antonvs 1mo agoYes, I know, I got a job offer to work in the Watson research lab around that time, at the T.J. Watson facility. I declined because they weren’t remote-friendly, among other things. But IBM Tom would at least have a rationale. WTF is IBM Bob and why does it have the same name as an old Microsoft product?
- DonHopkins 1mo agoIBM Wat?
- antonvs 1mo agoSeconded