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IBM halting sales of Watson AI tool for drug discovery

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Re: IBM halting sales of Watson AI tool for drug discovery

#11

Post by euler_ »

devoply wrote: post #9
imroot wrote: post #4

I have a friend who is an OB/GYN Oncologist in Indianapolis. Her hospital had IBM Watson Health on campus last year, and she mentioned to me in passing last month that they finally had kicked IBM off of their (learning) university's campus. When I asked her why, she said: "Often times, Watson would recommend courses of treatment that would be completely incorrect, if not detrimental -- or even sometimes lethal -- to…

It's good we still have doctors to provide oversight for this sort of thing. Imagine a future where machines take over because they are thought to be smarter than doctors and then start killing people and their mistakes are written off because the people were already sick. Like an Elizabeth Holmes AI.

Does it make a difference if they preform better than human docs? The same thing happens now with human docs.

Re: IBM halting sales of Watson AI tool for drug discovery

#13

Post by ethbro »

euler_ wrote: post #11
devoply wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's good we still have doctors to provide oversight for this sort of thing. Imagine a future where machines take over because they are thought to be smarter than doctors and then start killing people and their mistakes are written off because the people were already sick. Like an Elizabeth Holmes AI.

Does it make a difference if they preform better than human docs? The same thing happens now with human docs.

The difference is the expectation of fallibility with human docs. Which is why checks are built into the system.

I have zero trust in IBM to market their ML products correctly so that proper checks are maintained.

Especially since technically, explainability is still an active area of ML research.

Re: IBM halting sales of Watson AI tool for drug discovery

#14

Post by dekhn »

sambroner wrote: post #2

I can’t read most of that article because it’s behind a paywall, but wow, is Watson just the largest attempt to sell vaporware of all time?? They had a super bowl ad! A few friends from university were hired into the Watson team as hardly technical PMs. I have never heard any of them describe what Watson is or does.

there are large amounts of interesting things in watson but it was still overmarketed for what it can do.

Re: IBM halting sales of Watson AI tool for drug discovery

#16

Post by VeninVidiaVicii »

sambroner wrote: post #2

I can’t read most of that article because it’s behind a paywall, but wow, is Watson just the largest attempt to sell vaporware of all time?? They had a super bowl ad! A few friends from university were hired into the Watson team as hardly technical PMs. I have never heard any of them describe what Watson is or does.

That's really interesting. I work in the emergency room, and pretty much our entire approach up patient care is algorithm-driven.

As soon as the patient checks in, their demographics (age, sex, etc) and vitals are fed into a mysterious program, which suggests an acuity level, and basically drives the whole course of treatment. The patient is required to be tested for a variety of disease processes based on the AI-generated differential diagnoses.

Honestly, I thought/still think medicine is headed toward this, which is why I decided to go into research.

Re: IBM halting sales of Watson AI tool for drug discovery

#18

Post by apohn »

donkeyd wrote: post #7
sambroner wrote: post #2

I can’t read most of that article because it’s behind a paywall, but wow, is Watson just the largest attempt to sell vaporware of all time?? They had a super bowl ad! A few friends from university were hired into the Watson team as hardly technical PMs. I have never heard any of them describe what Watson is or does.

I've commented this before, but Watson is nothing but branding for anything IBM does that is somewhat intelligent. There's pretty much no common technology between the different Watson products, so there's no 'core Watson' like many people believe. Some products with Watson branding are great and industry leading. Others suck. The latter tend to appear in headlines and severely impact the brand they established with…

I suspect what happened was that Watson started out as a single product or focused suite of products. I'm just guessing, but then as the marketing induced hype started and growth/results were not on target , they realized there was a lot of interest in Watson so IBM pivoted and started rolling everything under the Watson brand - products, consulting, cloud stuff, etc. Basically that way they could say Watson was a "success" and internally/externally it would be opaque as to where exactly the profits and losses were.

I say all this because I'm at a place now where this is happening. Hugh company with a supposedly game changing product that is mediocre (at best). Massive marketing campaign for "Product X" that is 100% buzzwords and 200% BS. After constant missed revenue targets and product disappointments internally and externally, company is clearly pivoting (but not saying so) to rolling everything under "Brand X."

Re: IBM halting sales of Watson AI tool for drug discovery

#19

Post by wpasc »

I sincerely hope IBM's failures do not deter further progress in trying to innovate in healthcare technology. I believe healthcare vitally needs GOOD/USEFUL technology and AI applications because medical progress is not advancing quickly enough by several metrics.

I hope IBM continues to fail and becomes a case study in the failure of massive bureaucracy.

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