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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

#61

Post by fatjokes »

ma2rten wrote: post #15
fatjokes wrote: post #8

Honest question: how much top-tier ML research comes out of IBM Research? I feel like they get what they paid for---and they pay shit from what I hear.

I don't think that top-tier research is necessarily equal to top pay. Otherwise universities would not stand any chance. That said, I don't think IBM Watson has published much top-tier research.

Academia is not the same as industry, so total comp is not comparable. Tenure, more work freedom, social prestige are intangibles that would need to be factored into academic pay.

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

#62

Post by gaius »

ApolloFortyNine wrote: post #60
gaius wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no objection to them selling a working technology but they knew Watson was pure snake oil and did it anyway. Same as Theranos.

If people require 100% accuracy out of the gate from any software then we might as well give up now. It's not as if doctors get it right all the time, if you know anyone with medical issues they've likely heard different opinions from different doctors themselves. Anything more complicated then a broken bone seems to get mixed responses about what should be done, or even what the cause of the complication is in the f…

A technology in this stage of immaturity is fine to trial but IBM should be paying the hospitals not the other way round. They are doing experiments with peoples lives - again just like Theranos.

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

#63

Post by jonhendry18 »

gaius wrote: post #26
scarejunba wrote: post #12

That's okay, though, right? We're not talking about fully automating diagnosis and treatment. We're talking about using a tool to help doctors diagnose and treat more effectively. i.e. it's more like predictive text input than anything. If it makes it faster for you to diagnose, makes harder to diagnose stuff easier, and recommends the right treatment most of the time then it saves the doctor some time and energy. Th…

We're talking about using a tool to help doctors diagnose and treat more effectively. A very expensive tool when healthcare systems are strapped for cash. Super unethical of IBM to try and extract profits here.

"healthcare systems are strapped for cash"

I don't know about that. Most of the new construction in Connecticut seems to be building medical offices for Hartford Healthcare or other medical groups.

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

#65

Post by UnhelpfulYoda »

scarejunba wrote: post #12

That's okay, though, right? We're not talking about fully automating diagnosis and treatment. We're talking about using a tool to help doctors diagnose and treat more effectively. i.e. it's more like predictive text input than anything. If it makes it faster for you to diagnose, makes harder to diagnose stuff easier, and recommends the right treatment most of the time then it saves the doctor some time and energy. Th…

Not really... I'm mean it's great for IBM financially, but not all that great for Hospitals and Medical Centers duped into this scam:

"University of Texas says the project cost MD Anderson more than $62 million"

source: MD Anderson Benches IBM Watson In Setback For Artificial Intelligence In Medicine https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2017/02/19/md-and...

As for your analogy, you got still tragically flawed predictive text technology for free. Nobody bought iPhones for their crappy predictive text capabilities. Imagine the horror if you actually had to pay for predictive text. As it is, it's a nice to have freebie that came along with your phone, which works.... sometimes.

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

#66

Post by UnhelpfulYoda »

wolf550e wrote: post #23
scarejunba wrote: post #12

That's okay, though, right? We're not talking about fully automating diagnosis and treatment. We're talking about using a tool to help doctors diagnose and treat more effectively. i.e. it's more like predictive text input than anything. If it makes it faster for you to diagnose, makes harder to diagnose stuff easier, and recommends the right treatment most of the time then it saves the doctor some time and energy. Th…

If you genuinely don't know how to spell something (children, ESL) then auto-correct might cause you to accept a correction to the wrong homophone and fool you into thinking it helped you. If the doctor doesn't know how to quickly and cheaply verify the machine's guess, they'll just rubber stamp its recommendations.

Even worse, depending on how well the IBM sales team pawns this hokum off as a legitimate diagnostic tool, the next logical step will be for malpractice insurance companies forcing physicians to consult with Watson before making any decisions.

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

#67

Post by ntsplnkv2 »

ballenf wrote: post #27
binarymax wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally agree. Applying existing ML/"AI" to treating cancer is extremely misguided, and IMO dangerous and unethical. ML performs very well for specific well defined tasks that have an obvious outcome and are highly narrow in scope. Cancer is a disease that we can't even treat ourselves in many cases. It requires a great deal of creativity and critical thinking to reach solutions on a case by case basis. Who is so arr…

There has long been a calculus of using more risky or long shot treatments for the more deadly or hopeless diseases. Certain types of cancer are essentially death sentences. Maybe it's counterintuitive, but it makes a lot more sense to use ML for cancer than say a broken arm. There are so many systems interacting in cancer that affect its progression that humans really are at there limits in trying to understand them…

> There are so many systems interacting in cancer that affect its progression that humans really are at there limits in trying to understand them.

Bacterial infections also have a ridiculous amount of systems involved and yet that was figured out by humans.

I don't see how ML helps with cancer at all right now. The problem isn't the amount of data. It's the quality of it.

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