If they are unable to attract talent and innovate in their core business, how are they supposedly pursuing sophisticated AI, and the biggest question, is why?
What other products or innovations have come out of IBM Research? What is their overall reputation, and why should we believe them? Why don't they release Watson to the world, like Microsoft did with their twitter bot?
If I were a recent grad or even mid level in my career and wanted to work on as interesting projects as I could, I wouldn't be going to IBM. My first priority would be access to interesting and varied datasets, such as what can be obtained at Facebook, Google, Amazon, or another such company. A close second would be any of the players in the hardware ML industry such as Nvidia.
I don't understand what's so special about Watson, it all seems like marketing BS to me for a company in the death throws.