Watson's Broken Promise
Grammar: Passive Voice
A Business English English lesson exploring business.
What's in this lesson
A Business English ESL lesson on business, practising passive voice. The worksheet has a reading, target vocabulary, a grammar reference with practice and discussion questions.
From the reading: Watson's Broken Promise
"We are going to change the way humanity fights cancer." That was how IBM's then-CEO Virginia Rometty framed the Watson Health project to investors in 2015. The announcement was greeted with enormous enthusiasm by hospital boards across the United States and Asia. Hundreds of millions of dollars were committed by health systems in Manila, Bangkok, and Houston — all of them persuaded that IBM's AI platform would transform oncology. Within six years, the entire division had been wound down.
Vocabulary
- overstate capability
- pilot programme
- post-mortem analysis
- wind down
Grammar: Passive Voice
- Agent included
- The report was written by the procurement team. — agent matters; attribution is the point
- Agent omitted
- Errors were identified and adjustments were recommended. — agent unknown or irrelevant
Discussion questions
- Have you noticed how companies describe AI failures very differently from AI successes?
- Why do you think hospitals and banks still buy technology they do not fully understand?
- When a major project fails at work, who usually ends up being held responsible?
Watson's Broken Promise
Grammar: Passive Voice
What's in this lesson:
Full lesson plan with reading, grammar, vocabulary, and discussion.
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