Doc Watson Says: Take Two Big Blue Pills and Call Me in the Morning… If You Are Alive
August 1, 2018
Oh, dear. AI technology has great potential for good, but even IBM Watson is not perfect, it seems. Gizmodo reports, “IBM Watson Reportedly Recommended Cancer Treatments that Were ‘Unsafe and Incorrect’.” The flubs were found during an evaluation of the software, not within a real-world implementation. (We think.) Still, it is a problem worth keeping an eye on. Writer Jennings Brown cites a report by Stat News that reviewed some 2017 documents from IBM Watson’s former deputy health chief Andrew Norden, reports that were reportedly also provided to IBM Watson Health’s management. We’re told:
“One example in the documents is the case of a 65-year-old man diagnosed with lung cancer, who also seemed to have severe bleeding. Watson reportedly suggested the man be administered both chemotherapy and the drug ‘Bevacizumab.’ But the drug can lead to ‘severe or fatal hemorrhage,’ according to a warning on the medication, and therefore shouldn’t be given to people with severe bleeding, as Stat points out. A Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center spokesperson told Stat that they believed this recommendation was not given to a real patient, and was just a part of system testing. …According to the report, the documents blame the training provided by IBM engineers and on doctors at MSK, which partnered with IBM in 2012 to train Watson to ‘think’ more like a doctor. The documents state that—instead of feeding real patient data into the software—the doctors were reportedly feeding Watson hypothetical patients data, or ‘synthetic’ case data. This would mean it’s possible that when other hospitals used the MSK-trained Watson for Oncology, doctors were receiving treatment recommendations guided by MSK doctors’ treatment preferences, instead of an AI interpretation of actual patient data.”
Houston, we have a problem. Let that be a lesson, folks—always feed your AI real, high-quality case data. Not surprisingly, doctors who have already invested in Watson for Oncology are unhappy about the news, saying the technology can now only be used to supply an “extra opinion” when human doctors disagree. Sounds like a plan or common sense.
Cynthia Murrell, August 1, 2018
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