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IBM Watson correctly diagnoses a form of leukemia

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Re: IBM Watson correctly diagnoses a form of leukemia

#21

Post by sk5t »

bitmapbrother wrote: post #17
jacquesm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would definitely be impressive, but it doesn't mean much without knowing how many times it mis-diagnosed. IBM is very good at PR and Watson is milked for every little bit so I'm always a bit suspicious about it in triumphant announcements like these. After all, winning the lottery is a lot less impressive if you've bought a few million tickets and this article says absolutely nothing about any kind of controls or…

That's pretty cynical of you. Perhaps you should give credit where credit is due instead of attributing it to just PR. Watson diagnosed an illness that was undetected by her doctors. This happens all of the time and people die because of this or live in misery because of it. If Watson can prevent even a fraction of the rampant misdiagnoses and aid in the actual determination of the illness then it's in our benefit to…

It isn't cynical to insist on knowing the test's sensitivity and selectivity.

Re: IBM Watson correctly diagnoses a form of leukemia

#22

Post by Zigurd »

rdtsc wrote: post #20

It is funny that so many are quick to dismiss this because it is IBM, so "it must be just PR" (saw a few comments here). If Google did this or Elon Musk, everyone would be singing praises and musing about a better, brighter future. Which is funny because it is Google / Facebook / Microsoft which collect and hold everyone's personal details and data. For better or for worse, IBM never seemed to have gotten into that b…

You would see many of the same comments no matter who claimed some kind of first in medical diagnosis. Expert systems have been coming up with diagnoses doctors missed for decades.

It's a fat target for automation because much of the expertise is available in diagnostic protocols and few humans can hold all that information in their heads and keep it up to date. MYCIN only used a few hundred rules and it could keep track of which antibiotics to use better than MDs.

Re: IBM Watson correctly diagnoses a form of leukemia

#23

Post by mmaunder »

apathy wrote: post #2

I can't get past the adblocker spam, but I'm going to guess this woman had APL (acute promyelocytic leukemia, caused almost exclusively by a very specific chromosomal translocation) and the doctors didn't think to look for Auer rods and thus did not try FISHing for the translocation. APL is deadly (5% survival) if treated incorrectly but curable (95%) if treated correctly. However, something or other about that diffe…

Shouldn't the headline be "Doctors use powerful computer to aid diagnoses." The article unashamedly dives straight into robot doctors.

Re: IBM Watson correctly diagnoses a form of leukemia

#25

Post by will_brown »

jacquesm wrote: post #6
apathy wrote: post #2

I can't get past the adblocker spam, but I'm going to guess this woman had APL (acute promyelocytic leukemia, caused almost exclusively by a very specific chromosomal translocation) and the doctors didn't think to look for Auer rods and thus did not try FISHing for the translocation. APL is deadly (5% survival) if treated incorrectly but curable (95%) if treated correctly. However, something or other about that diffe…

It would definitely be impressive, but it doesn't mean much without knowing how many times it mis-diagnosed. IBM is very good at PR and Watson is milked for every little bit so I'm always a bit suspicious about it in triumphant announcements like these. After all, winning the lottery is a lot less impressive if you've bought a few million tickets and this article says absolutely nothing about any kind of controls or…

>nothing about any kind of controls or whether or not this was a one-off performance or if it would work at scale.

I thought the 20 million oncology studies Watson cross referenced was the control and I arrived at the opposite conclusion as you about the usefulness at scale.

For example, I immediately thought that under the Affordable Care Act, the number of patient Electronic Health Records the Government collects eclipses what Watson had to work with in this case so at scale the potential is huge. Admittedly, until reading your comment I did not consider there were likely a number of times Watson misdiagnosed (which seems obvious now). Therefore, it would be interesting to rerun against the Electronic Health Records the Government has collected so far and test if Watson could diagnosis correctly in less attempts than with the 20 million record it used (or what I call the control). Though at that point, I think it would be the patient that is the control.

Re: IBM Watson correctly diagnoses a form of leukemia

#26

Post by paulsutter »

rdtsc wrote: post #20

It is funny that so many are quick to dismiss this because it is IBM, so "it must be just PR" (saw a few comments here). If Google did this or Elon Musk, everyone would be singing praises and musing about a better, brighter future. Which is funny because it is Google / Facebook / Microsoft which collect and hold everyone's personal details and data. For better or for worse, IBM never seemed to have gotten into that b…

This is an anecdote and could only be meaningful as statistics. Landing a booster stage once is an accomplishment, you can't guess you way to a stable landing. Making one diagnosis is not news. Especially since we can be sure they've tried to make many, and somehow they're only promoting the result of one.

Re: IBM Watson correctly diagnoses a form of leukemia

#27

Post by adventured »

bitmapbrother wrote: post #18
etangent wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. It is most likely that Watson is far less powerful than advertised. Given enough trials, a pigeon could probably detect some forms of cancer that a human expert can't. [1] 2. I too would prefer that more open-source work (and published research) would come out of Watson project than it has been the case so far. However, there's a devil's advocate point to be made that closedness encourages diversity of approaches…

Of course, just like monkeys picking stocks with darts can outperform the best traders on Wall street.

That's not even remotely true.

The Quantum Fund by Soros and others, returned upwards of 30% per year for over three decades.

Steve Cohen averaged near 30% annual returns for two decades.

Buffett's investing track record is similarly off the charts.

And lastly, a monkey couldn't do what John Paulson (or Burry and Eisman) did with the 'greatest trade ever,' producing a radical outcome from an extremely intricate concentrated investment (some of which required them goading the opportunity into existence to begin with).

If you had said monkeys with darts can sometimes outperform the bottom half of traders on Wall Street, you might have been close.

Re: IBM Watson correctly diagnoses a form of leukemia

#28

Post by rdtsc »

paulsutter wrote: post #26
rdtsc wrote: post #20

It is funny that so many are quick to dismiss this because it is IBM, so "it must be just PR" (saw a few comments here). If Google did this or Elon Musk, everyone would be singing praises and musing about a better, brighter future. Which is funny because it is Google / Facebook / Microsoft which collect and hold everyone's personal details and data. For better or for worse, IBM never seemed to have gotten into that b…

This is an anecdote and could only be meaningful as statistics. Landing a booster stage once is an accomplishment, you can't guess you way to a stable landing. Making one diagnosis is not news. Especially since we can be sure they've tried to make many, and somehow they're only promoting the result of one.

Except, as person who doesn't plan on flying to space soon, but who will at some point in life need a good medical diagnosis, for purely selfish reasons, I would rather want the medical diagnosis to get more attention and improvement.

Re: IBM Watson correctly diagnoses a form of leukemia

#29

Post by bitmapbrother »

sk5t wrote: post #21
bitmapbrother wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty cynical of you. Perhaps you should give credit where credit is due instead of attributing it to just PR. Watson diagnosed an illness that was undetected by her doctors. This happens all of the time and people die because of this or live in misery because of it. If Watson can prevent even a fraction of the rampant misdiagnoses and aid in the actual determination of the illness then it's in our benefit to…

It isn't cynical to insist on knowing the test's sensitivity and selectivity.

It's one thing to ask for additional information on how the test was conducted and another to automatically attribute it to a PR play that IBM likes to "milk every last drop of".

That's cynical.

Re: IBM Watson correctly diagnoses a form of leukemia

#30

Post by bitmapbrother »

adventured wrote: post #27
bitmapbrother wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course, just like monkeys picking stocks with darts can outperform the best traders on Wall street.

That's not even remotely true. The Quantum Fund by Soros and others, returned upwards of 30% per year for over three decades. Steve Cohen averaged near 30% annual returns for two decades. Buffett's investing track record is similarly off the charts. And lastly, a monkey couldn't do what John Paulson (or Burry and Eisman) did with the 'greatest trade ever,' producing a radical outcome from an extremely intricate conce…

30% returns per year for over three decades? Impressive. I wonder how much of that was attributed to insider information.
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