I don't think this isn't limited to IBM, my partner's PE firm recently hired a small consulting group touting a "revolutionary, AI-driven" real-estate analysis product that has zero AI whatsoever. It's basically a custom spreadsheet tool that they're claiming to be building AI on top of as they consume company data, but for a few hundred grand per year, they have a basic CRUD app on Azure with a reporting tool using D3 visualizations. But they think it's AI.
It's almost like 2016-17 were gold-mine years for marketing buzzwords and some companies are closing deals with no real execution plan for what they're selling.
I work in quant finance, and indeed there is currently a boom of people claiming to be building AI/ML funds. I mean there's some smart people who actually do have AI/ML degrees, but it's sold just like Watson: magic beans.
Now it's not that it can't be done, it's just not as easy as "hire an AI guy and show him financial data". Same with Watson, it's not physically impossible to build a cancer scanner, it's just very hard and not quite fulfilling lofty expectations yet.
The people with the problem here are the people buying it though. Even if you lie to yourself or are just stupid. If you can sell people that you have AI without actually having it, I'd argue that it's actually a strength.
It's almost like 2016-17 were gold-mine years for marketing buzzwords and some companies are closing deals with no real execution plan for what they're selling.