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It was an audacious undertaking, even for one of the most storied American companies: With a single machine, IBM would tackle humanity's most vexing diseases and revolutionize medicine.
Breathlessly promoting its signature brand — Watson — IBM sought to capture the world's imagination, and it quickly zeroed in on a high-profile target: cancer.
But three years after IBM began selling Watson to recommend the best cancer treatments to doctors around the world, a STAT investigation has found that the supercomputer isn't living up to the lofty expectations IBM created for it. It is still struggling with the basic step of learning about different forms of cancer. Only a few dozen hospitals have adopted the system, which is a long way from IBM's goal of establishing dominance in a multibillion-dollar market. And at foreign hospitals, physicians complained its advice is biased toward American patients and methods of care.
[...] Perhaps the most stunning overreach is in the company's claim that Watson for Oncology, through artificial intelligence, can sift through reams of data to generate new insights and identify, as an IBM sales rep put it, "even new approaches" to cancer care. STAT found that the system doesn't create new knowledge and is artificially intelligent only in the most rudimentary sense of the term.
Watson "has failed to end a streak of 21 consecutive quarters of declining revenue at IBM." Ouch.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Monday September 11 2017, @01:46AM (4 children)
As I approach 60, even though there is no cancer history in my family I'd hoped Watson would come up with something. Cuz there is alzheimer's in my family, and that scares the holy stinky stuff out of me.
Chillun, trust me on this. Getting old sucks. The only thing worse is not getting old.
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 11 2017, @01:56AM
eh, 60's not a big deal, nothing happened when that decade flipped for me a few years ago. Aches and pains may be a little more common but if you ride a bike every now and then, or do some good walking to stay in shape, then you will probably be fine for many more years.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday September 11 2017, @04:29AM
I thought the Watson approach was about combing through a massive amount of new medical knowledge that individual doctors can't handle, and assisting in the creation of personalized diagnosis/treatment, including genome analysis. It's not suprising Watson has not borne fruit yet, but if it continues to suck for long it may bring down the company.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by bart9h on Monday September 11 2017, @09:10PM (1 child)
You can say "shit" on the Internet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 12 2017, @01:28AM
Sure, let's promote crassness and weak vernacular by using naughty words like third-graders who just discovered them!