Reply to post: While I agree

Elementary, my dear IBM: When will Watson make money?

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

While I agree

There's entirely too much hype around 'AI' these days, investors shouldn't be worrying about IBM turning a profit on that division. They're investing for the future, and if they're the first to have truly useful AI the billions (probably trillions) will roll in for them.

Imagine where we'd all be today if AT&T investors had insisted on a profit while they were doing R&D that led to the development of the laser, the transistor, and so forth?

Now the investors could argue that its a dead end, or they don't want to wait that long, or whatever, but then don't complain when they don't have any major new markets in a decade. Oh, I forgot, investors only care about the next quarter these days... Maybe they need a new class of stock without voting rights, and can use the proceeds from selling shares of the new class to buy back most of the shares that can vote. Then the people who care only about quarterly earnings can buy the non-voting stock, and the people who want to actually invest rather than speculate can buy the stock with voting rights and take a longer term view.

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