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IBM's Watson Gets Its First Piece Of Business In Healthcare

forbes.com

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Re: IBM's Watson Gets Its First Piece Of Business In Healthcare

#61

Post by xyzzy123 »

rtkwe wrote: post #31
booruguru wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This product is essentially a search engine. Doctors refer to medical texts all of time, this IBM tool is simply making it easier (and faster) to access the right information using plain English queries. It's not like we're going to replace doctors with computer kiosks...well, at least not until they work out some of the bugs.

It's more than a search engine it aggregates the information from say 10 different studies or cases about a disease into a set of information which it then compares against the current case the doctor is looking at. At that point it posits some diagnoses or some treatments. Calling it a search engine is pretty dismissive.

I agree, this is a lot more than a search engine. But I guess that over time it will have to deal with the same issues that search engines do.

Think drug company or test procedure journal spam, designed to SEO Watson into making specific decisions or recommendations.

Re: IBM's Watson Gets Its First Piece Of Business In Healthcare

#62

Post by Aron »

I can imagine the use of this for political campaigns, wherein the strategy is determined by the combinations of sub-electorate most likely achievable via which policy positions, stumping, ad-spend, etc.

I'd like to see the sports version as well for team-building, drafting, etc. I've long thought it would be entertaining as well to have a sports announcer that was an AI.

Not as high-profile or morally impressive, but I'm concerned that healthcare outcomes are difficult to measure and frequently marginal.

Re: IBM's Watson Gets Its First Piece Of Business In Healthcare

#63

Post by Aron »

lucidrains wrote: post #48

i am in awe with the demonstration. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZsPc0h_mtM . i think anyone who has done any sort of clinical reasoning in the hospital would be at least a little impressed. the scary part is that such technologies can only improve, while even the most seasoned physician eventually have to face mental decline.

Yeah interesting. It doesn't appear to characterize her bleak prognosis (regardless of treatment).

Re: IBM's Watson Gets Its First Piece Of Business In Healthcare

#64

Post by joonix »

booruguru wrote: post #5
DeepDuh wrote: post #2

People don't seem to realize how huge this is. This venture could easily turn out to be the most profitable in IBM's history, and one of the most important inventions in health care.

Preach on. I'm baffled by how techies can be so underwhelmed by what IBM is doing.

Mining tweets to determine global reaction to a stadium power outage is far more interesting, of course.

Re: IBM's Watson Gets Its First Piece Of Business In Healthcare

#65

Post by yummyfajitas »

foobarqux wrote: post #56
yummyfajitas wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...100K $/year, so he gets access to Watson...only 30K $/year...open source one, which has 10% less accuracy. That would be tragic. Why is a Pareto improvement (everyone being better off than before) tragic?

Can't we reasonably argue that there is a psychological, emotional or social cost in having some people much worse off than others?

I wouldn't describe some people suffering from envy as "tragic".

Similarly, if a bunch of racists feel anger because black people can now eat at the same diner as them, I think the word "tragic" would be the wrong word.

Re: IBM's Watson Gets Its First Piece Of Business In Healthcare

#66

Post by sesqu »

DeepDuh wrote: post #54
MoosePlissken wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The book "Thinking, Fast and Slow" has a great chapter on human predictions versus those made by forumlas. The superiority of simple forumlas was being demonstrated way back in the 50s (see "Clinical Versus Statistical Prediction: A Theoretical Analysis And A Review Of The Evidence"). Since then the evidence for statistical rather than intuitive prediction has only become stronger. From "Thinking, Fast and Slow": "Th…

60% out of 200 studies is not all that good, really. It allows the experts to believe that if they're still in the top 25%, no machine can beat them (I know that this is not exactly what the studies say, but statistics are almost always being misinterpreted, so I do it here too). The thing is: I expect Watson to perform significantly better than this. If it can beat Jeopardy grandmasters consistantly and if that tech…

It's worth noting that Watson didn't beat the Jeopardy grandmasters with accuracy, but with speed - not that that isn't useful in healthcare, given sufficient accuracy.

Re: IBM's Watson Gets Its First Piece Of Business In Healthcare

#67

Post by wisty »

foobarqux wrote: post #56
yummyfajitas wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...100K $/year, so he gets access to Watson...only 30K $/year...open source one, which has 10% less accuracy. That would be tragic. Why is a Pareto improvement (everyone being better off than before) tragic?

Can't we reasonably argue that there is a psychological, emotional or social cost in having some people much worse off than others?

There's lots of critics of the current US healthcare system who think so. Jerry on $30k a year (without insurance) currently posts pictures of his spots to 4chan, and get's told "it's cancer, you're gonna die", "cut it off", "no prob, it's nothing", and even less useful suggestions.

Re: IBM's Watson Gets Its First Piece Of Business In Healthcare

#68

Post by foobarqux »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #65
foobarqux wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't we reasonably argue that there is a psychological, emotional or social cost in having some people much worse off than others?

I wouldn't describe some people suffering from envy as "tragic". Similarly, if a bunch of racists feel anger because black people can now eat at the same diner as them, I think the word "tragic" would be the wrong word.

The argument was that the example given wasn't necessarily a Pareto improvement, even if one was trying to put aside issues of social justice by invoking economics.

Re: IBM's Watson Gets Its First Piece Of Business In Healthcare

#69

Post by yummyfajitas »

foobarqux wrote: post #68
yummyfajitas wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't describe some people suffering from envy as "tragic". Similarly, if a bunch of racists feel anger because black people can now eat at the same diner as them, I think the word "tragic" would be the wrong word.

The argument was that the example given wasn't necessarily a Pareto improvement, even if one was trying to put aside issues of social justice by invoking economics.

Assuming that the open source version is at least as good as a doctor, how is it not a Pareto improvement?

"Social justice" is a typically poorly defined, loftily written way of replacing "I'm jealous" with "it's not faaaiir".

Re: IBM's Watson Gets Its First Piece Of Business In Healthcare

#70

Post by foobarqux »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #69
foobarqux wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The argument was that the example given wasn't necessarily a Pareto improvement, even if one was trying to put aside issues of social justice by invoking economics.

Assuming that the open source version is at least as good as a doctor, how is it not a Pareto improvement? "Social justice" is a typically poorly defined, loftily written way of replacing "I'm jealous" with "it's not faaaiir".

Because, as I said "there is a psychological, emotional or social cost in having some people much worse off than others". In order to invoke Pareto optimality you must define utility functions and you can justify essentially any policy by omitting costs and externalities in those functions.
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