https://mindmatters.ai/2019/08/why-was-ibm-watson-a-flop-in-medicine/
3 replies (most recent on top)
Data. Machine Learning/AI is nothing without good, structured data. I imagine in a field like the Health Industry getting good data to train on is a b–challenging. Electronic Health Records locked up tight (HIPAA), medical professionals and institutions that don't play nicely with each other, most companies only open during very short hours during the week... Have you ever had to have more than one doctors office repeat the same tests or ask for the same dang information 500 times? IBM had a great idea - it was just 20 years early on the implementation. They've always been phenomenal in inventions and creativity over the decades but their execution unfortunately has failed much of the time (think the invention of the PC). The Health Industry is going to be a tough nut to crack for tech companies. It is slow changing, stubborn, and has a lot of very large corporations and entities riding out its ineffectiveness. They will not look too kindly on change. At the very least, whichever company comes along next will have an idea of what NOT to do. :)
@1dia - You touched on the real issue here, namely the IBM marketing machine which has always been too powerful in terms of when products are released and for spewing-out the exaggerated hype around each. As UC San Francisco medical chair Robert Wachter said about Watson's AI Doctor, "They came in with marketing first, product second, and got everybody excited."
Great article. Funny and pathetic at the same time.
I'll take a crack at answering the title question:
IBM Watson failed at medicine because you had a situation where the millennial data scientists were all pumped up on their new "science" and didn't have the skeptical sense to question the value of the data being input, the older data scientists kinda knew that much of the data were c-ap but didn't have the balls to speak up lest they be laid off (like I was), and marketing and management who cared only about the bottom line because they are crooks. So the outcome was a new AI that would cure cancer and make most medical professionals obsolete; in other words, total BS. Sound familiar? Still proud?