IBM AKA International Business Machines Corporation AKA Big Blue
[related: Patent Wars,
Founded in 1911 as a holding company of manufacturers of record-keeping and other tabulation systems. The company pivoted to technical research and development following World War I, and came into prominence by supplying weapons and technical equipment to both the allies and Nazi forces in World War II. Emboldened by the wartime cash boon of the 1940's, IBM began to focus increasingly on the development of artificial intelligence, releasing the IBM 704, a rudimentary chess playing automaton, in 1956. A focus on AI-generated language and graphix systems emerged in the 1960's: in 1968, members of IBM Tokyo's Computer Technique Group debuted a series of digital prints entitled Running Cola is AfricaΩ, a work commonly thought to be the first piece of AI-generated art. The company concurrently intensified its chess-related efforts in the early 1990's, culminating in the release of Deep Blue, a viciously competitive, grand-master-level computer - the model's second generation soundly defeated world champion Gary Kasparov. In the mid-1990's, IBM began to focus more specifically on the development of machine sentience using neural network modeling. Despite the company's stated altruistic aims, critics of IBM decried the company's efforts as potentially apocalyptic, drawing comparisons to the dystopian sci-fi scenarios of Terminator's SkyNet, Blade Runner's Tyrell Corporation, Knight Rider, Metal Gear Solid, and the general morose future portrayed in William Gibson's [1]Neuromancer.
Throughout its history, IBM has alternatingly colluded with and strategically undermined its only significant rival: the formidable communications giant Bell Systems AKA Ma Bell. Industry lore posits COBOL's adoption as the United States' semi-official business computing language to be the initial genesis of the feud. Over the last thirty-odd years, IBM has engaged in a veritable patent arms race with its rival - a contest commonly known as the "patent wars". Despite Ma Bell's significant budgetary and personnel advantages, IBM holds the record for most U.S. patents generated by a business or corporation for 29 years running [2].
- ↑ Ironically, IBM purchased an AI-assisted anti-virus software dubbed "BlackICE" - a reference to Gibson's fictional "ICE" cyber defence systems - in 1999 for $78 million dollars, despite the program's penchant for bugs and "hallucinations".
- ↑ IBM has been widely accused of artificially inflating patent numbers by coding slight modifications to old patents as new submissions and inundating the patent office with hundreds of superfluous, essentially useless/non-monetizable, and/or trivial inventions2. 2Examples include: out-of-office email systems (years after the service had become standard), mood-adjusting elevator music, the "keyboard umbrella" (a device designed to prevent "wet keyboard syndrome"), and patent licensing management - essentially an attempt at patenting the patent process itself. IBM's patent-generating strategy also included occasional and often ill-fated collusions with members of the hacking, phracking, and phreaking.