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IBM's Watson recommended 'unsafe and incorrect' cancer treatments

gizmodo.com

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Re: IBM's Watson recommended 'unsafe and incorrect' cancer treatments

#3

Post by spike021 »

Out of something from science fiction.. would an "issue" like this ever be the type of problem where the AI can "understand" the cancer better than we can and see where a certain treatment might be more beneficial than we've thought of?

Or is this just a plain old failure?

Re: IBM's Watson recommended 'unsafe and incorrect' cancer treatments

#4

Post by deviationblue »

We're putting a lot of faith in tools that can best be described as immature. I don't think it's out of the question to get A.I. (not speaking of Watson, which is A.I. adjacent) to the point where it can perform perfectly at human intelligence tasks. The point is to have these systems perform better than their human counterparts (at least, I think that should be aim for something like Watson for Health). The people who built these things are learning themselves. As we make more progress in technology and AI, I don't doubt that we could break that barrier. There may be an upper limit because maybe the human brain is incapable of solving some problems, but even there I think it's not difficult to imagine workarounds. Simply put, I don't think the answer is to think these problems could never be solved.

Additionally, human-assisted A.I. is not the solution, it's a non-answer to the problem of creating systems that can think and perform at human levels of intelligence. It's okay to admit if we don't have the ability to make these things, but its disingenuous to believe that human involvement in helping computers get to the right answer is the right answer. Though yes, we need this right now to move things along where they otherwise might stand still.

Re: IBM's Watson recommended 'unsafe and incorrect' cancer treatments

#5

Post by notfromhere »

spike021 wrote: post #3

Out of something from science fiction.. would an "issue" like this ever be the type of problem where the AI can "understand" the cancer better than we can and see where a certain treatment might be more beneficial than we've thought of? Or is this just a plain old failure?

"Watson" is a marketing term for a bunch of slap-dash and half-assed analytics products that don't work.

It was never more than a cool Jeopardy robot and some sweet Bob Dylan ads

Re: IBM's Watson recommended 'unsafe and incorrect' cancer treatments

#6

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

spike021 wrote: post #3

Out of something from science fiction.. would an "issue" like this ever be the type of problem where the AI can "understand" the cancer better than we can and see where a certain treatment might be more beneficial than we've thought of? Or is this just a plain old failure?

>Out of something from science fiction.. would an "issue" like this ever be the type of problem where the AI can "understand" the cancer better

Ever? I don't see why not. In our lifetime? Probably not and especially not with current technology.

Re: IBM's Watson recommended 'unsafe and incorrect' cancer treatments

#7

Post by framebit »

spike021 wrote: post #3

Out of something from science fiction.. would an "issue" like this ever be the type of problem where the AI can "understand" the cancer better than we can and see where a certain treatment might be more beneficial than we've thought of? Or is this just a plain old failure?

Not to mention that even if the AI technology here was decent (which it doesn't appear to be) it suffered greatly from a dearth of samples. Machine learning requires big data, and cancer treatment data is, in many instances, just not big enough. An AI solution would need millions of well-labeled, perfectly formatted cases to learn from; there may be thousands of those for a particular subtype of cancer, but there's not millions.

Re: IBM's Watson recommended 'unsafe and incorrect' cancer treatments

#10

Post by otakucode »

The headline, and conclusion of the article, feel incomplete. A complete line would read "IBM Watson Reportedly Recommended 'Unsafe and Incorrect' Cancer Treatments At A Rate X% Higher Than Doctors." Doctors make mistake. Machine-based intelligences will make mistakes too. If you throw out a system that errs in 1 in every 100,000 cases so that you can stick with a system that errs in 1 in every 250 cases, you're not going to get anywhere.
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