Skip to main content

IBM’s Watson gave unsafe recommendations for treating cancer

By

IBM’s Watson supercomputer gave unsafe recommendations for treating cancer patients, according to documents reviewed by Stat. The report is the latest sign that Watson, once hyped as the future of cancer research, has fallen far short of expectations.

In 2012, doctors at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center partnered with IBM to train Watson to diagnose and treat patients. But according to IBM documents dated from last summer, the supercomputer has frequently given bad advice, like when it suggested a cancer patient with severe bleeding be given a drug that could cause the bleeding to worsen. (A spokesperson for Memorial Sloan Kettering said this suggestion was hypothetical and not inflicted on a real patient.)

“This product is a piece of s—,” one doctor at Jupiter Hospital in Florida told IBM executives, according to the documents. “We bought it for marketing and with hopes that you would achieve the vision. We can’t use it for most cases.”

The documents come from a presentation given by Andrew Norden, IBM Watson’s former deputy health chief, right before he left the company. In addition to showcasing customer dissatisfaction, they reveal problems with methods, too. Watson for Oncology was supposed to synthesize enormous amounts of data and come up with novel insights. But it turns out most of the data fed to it is hypothetical and not real patient data. That means the suggestions Watson made were simply based off the treatment preferences of the few doctors providing the data, not actual insights it gained from analyzing real cases.

An IBM spokesperson told Gizmodo that Watson for Oncology has “supported care for more than 84,000 patients” and is still learning. Apparently, it’s not learning the right things.



from The Verge - Teches https://ift.tt/2NNS02q
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Firefox is testing features that let you customize colors and view two tabs in one

By
Mozilla Firefox is testing out two new experimental extensions that let users further customize their browser and view tabs together more easily. The first one is called Firefox Color and it lets you change the colors of the background, text, icons, and the toolbar. Whatever you change can be saved and you can also choose to share your color schemes with others. Firefox also has a selection of pre-made color themes that you can choose from if you don’t want to customize every single color yourself. The second feature that Firefox is testing is called Side View and it does basically what it sounds like: you can view two browser tabs at once in the same tab and window. Without the feature, you can already line up two windows side by... Continue reading… from The Verge - All Posts https://ift.tt/2LZWa7h
Post a Comment
Read more

How to install Fortnite on Android

By
Epic Games launched its battle royale hit Fortnite on Android devices last week with a big catch: it was exclusive to Samsung-made phones for a few days as a way to help market the new Samsung Galaxy Note 9. Now, the exclusivity period appears to be over, and beta invite codes are going out to select users of non-Samsung phones like the Google Pixel 2 XL. If you’re itching to dive off the battle bus on mobile, you might have to hold on just a little while longer: there appears to be a waiting list, just like there was when the game launched on iOS. There’s also a bit of trickiness involving exactly how you get the app because Epic announced it would be distributing the Android version of Fortnite on its own terms . Last week, the app was distributed through Samsung’s app store, and Epic is using its own website and a Fortnite Installer program to distribute the game more widely on all compatible Android devices. (Epic CEO Tim Sweeney said this is basically to avoid paying Google...
Post a Comment
Read more