[RobertoG]

>>" I wonder what the eventual value proposition of working on this sort of stuff is."

It seems to me that, if you only take it as a marketing operation, it has been already very valuable.

[hobofan]

I'd really love to know how big the marketing impact on IBM Watson from this was. Somehow they managed to put the idea that "Watson is the best available AI" so well in the heads of then general population that 50%+ of my non-tech friends somehow thought that Watson beat the Go pros when I was talking with them about the topic when it was in the news.