Factualities: Believe Them or Not
August 1, 2018
Factualities quantify our online world. Today’s data:
- 80 percent of Dark Web visits relate to child porn. Source: Wired
- When organizations do not restrict any internet activity, over half of employees (58 percent) spend at least four hours per week, on Web sites unrelated to their job. Lost time: Just 26 work days every 12 months. Source: ZDNet
- Silicon Valley families making $117,000 are considered low income. Source: Boing Boing
- Dark Web boosts ecommerce fraud by 30 percent. Source: Forex
- The cost of UK biometric residence permits: About $30. Cheap some say. Source: The Register
Stephen E Arnold, August 1, 2018
Busy, Busy Google
August 1, 2018
It looks like catch-up time for Google. We suggest Amazon may be the one keeping it up at night. Whatever the case, an Inquirer article summarizes several recent Googley bragging points—“Google Is Going Heavy on AI Development and Hybrid Cloud.” Reporter Roland Moore-Colyer writes about developments the company shared at their recent Cloud Next conference. He surmises:
“Most notable is the search giant’s work with AI; it’s been doing a lot with making cloud-powered frameworks for developers to tap into to make killer robots clever software. At its cloudy conference, it took time to announce two fresh automatic machine learning tools. AutoML Natural Language lets devs automatically predict custom text categories specific to domains Google customers desire, while AutoML Translation allows translated language pairs to be uploaded so devs can create their own custom translation models. In short, the two tools are further ways Google has boosted its Cloud AutoML suite that gives people the means to get stuck into machine learning models without specialist smart software knowledge or coding. The firm also announced that third-generation Cloud TPUs are in alpha development – these custom processors have been specifically designed to power machine learning tasks and the third-gen promises more performance. Google also added more stuff to its machine learning APIs, such as the Cloud Vision API, which can now recognize handwriting and supports more file types. Yeah, Google is big into AI development for sure.”
Colyer goes on to share more news from the conference, like improvements to the G Suite of enterprise-level services that include AI-powered grammar suggestions and region-specific security features. As for the Google Cloud, we’re told most improvements lie in stack management. However, special mention is made of Google’s hybrid approach to its Cloud Service Platform, which combines cloud and on-premise deployment. We’re reminded that Microsoft had adopted a similar approach, so customers will be looking for that flexibility.
Cynthia Murrell, August 1, 2018
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
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
