Recently, a celebrity of the highest order visited the engineering school where I work. Not Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. It was none other than Watson, arguably the most famous piece of technology created in the last decade.
Watson’s star power was on full display, filling not only our largest auditorium, but also two overflow rooms we had set aside just in case a few extra folks showed up. What a testament to where we are today; our own recent history has shown that not even astronauts can draw budding engineers the way Watson can.
IBM’s latest celebrity computer gained fame when he (or is it she?) took on the two greatest winners in the history of the long-running game show Jeopardy in a three-day battle of the octagon with $1 million going to the winner.
Brad Rutter, all-time money winner, and Ken Jennings, record-holder for longest championship streak, seemed to have a huge advantage. The game is a wicked combination of two competing and quite demanding skills -- instantly intuiting the meaning behind cryptic clues across a wide range of random categories combined with the rapid retrieval of often esoteric and obscure facts. This was truly David versus Goliath, but what made this good TV was that no one really knew who was the real David or the real Goliath.
It turned out to be a big ratings winner for the show and network, pulling in a hefty 9.1 percent of the surveyed TVs. Why the fascination? Well, Jeopardy is not only part of American culture, but the show also puts on display the amazing abilities of humans keen on being the biggest know-it-all in the nation.
Fortunately for IBM and its shareholders, Watson emerges as the dominant player -- amassing more winnings than both Rutter and Jennings combined. Of course, it wasn’t certain at the outset. Day one ended with Watson and Rutter tied for the lead, providing the cliffhanger the producers had hoped for. But like Deep Blue versus Kasparov years before, the consistent humming drive of Watson seemed to emotionally exhaust the human competitors over the final two days.
Mycin went the same way 30 years ago. It was more narrow, just recommending therapies for bacterial infections. It had three problems: 1) it was inconvenient to use, doctors had to examine the patient, consult with the computer, do the additional exam requested by the computer, consult with the computer again, then decide whether to take its recommendation 2) it was very brittle, if it got something within its knowledge base it easily surpassed the physician, if there was even something slightly outside it came to completely erroneous conclusions and seemed unable to tell when it didn't know the answer, so it gave, sometimes really bad advice 3) it threatened the physicians, who felt their role was being reduced to the eyes and ears of the machine.
Watson could have a vastly greater scope, but I have a hard time imagining that it wouldn't have the same three problems. Problem 2 would just occur less often. The biggest issue will be solving problem 1. It will take an enormous leap forward in user interface to make this usable. If the machine could act as a real time collaborator, that might work. It would require that the doctor and the machine be able to converse extremely reliably. It would also require that the machine be sensitive to the patient's needs. It would have to alert the doctor to certain possibilies without alarming the patient. It would also have to be sensitive to the needs of the doctor. It would need to keep track of what the doctor is doing reliably on his own and not remind him of things that he never misses. Put together this is a huge task in social engineering as well as computer science.
Problem 3, I think will solve itself. Students introduced to it in the classroom will be adopters, if the other two problems are solved. They will view the machine as "having their back". The machine will also empower them to deal competently with a wider range of diseases, because they will be able to broaden their procedural competence while the machine covers the diagnostic scope. Their successes will draw the older ones in. There will be die-hards, of course, but they will either be highly competent people that don't need the machine, or they will be edged out by their own flagging performance.
My doctor already input everything in the computer. He/She would look at our kid, type in computer. Ask a question, type in computer. Doctor does nothing without documenting it from heart rate to pressure to what they see in eyes and ears. Probably partly liability anyway. Like aerospace technicial working on mission critical component. Every torque of the screw gets recorded. The day of doctors going by experiance is over already.
#3 Doctor acceptance
Statistic can readily show whether computer is better than doctor or not. How many misdiagnotics and how many tries before coming up with a cure. If is at all better, patient will demand it. It will not be doctor's preference. Either you have it or you are out of business.
Look, there is no way I would trust a doctor with my son if a computer is statistically 50% better. I am not going to feed my son unecessary medicine with large side effect. Definitely not subject him to the operation without consulting the computer and its billions of calculations.
"Given the current condition of our health care system and the organizations trying to run it, the concept of a "Watson" scares the heck out of me. We need a Watson, but we need to be very careful how we use it."
Just as Google rate their search base on advertisement, Watson can rate diagnose with cost of treatment. There is potential for huge abuse.
However, lawyers can have their own "uncorrupted Watson" in their office to build a strong case against HMO. Then you are talking about hundreds of millions of damage from both IBM and HMO. They are not that stupid.
Given Moore's law, politican Watson can't be far behind. It will store every single speech and vote of it's opponent. Every historical fact and every poll conducted. In a debate, given any issue, it will show how the opponent contradicted him/ herself. Show how they are wrong base on history, and say the exact right thing base on best possible poll numbers outcome. Victory will be a landslide.
Why restrict diagnostic to only sick patients. Expand it to our sick economy and ailing national policy. President Watson will know every historical economic event backed by numbers. Calculate supply and demand exactly. With hundreds of rows of super computer and ever expanding knowlege, it will know exactly how much to stimulate economy for steady growth. It will know the history and custom of every single country. Know when to go to war and how long it will last base on troops, terrain, capabililty and even weather prediction.
Watson president will be such a smooth talker and perfect decision maker voters will demand it. Can't get elected unless you have Watson "assisting" you. Your vote will be based on how closely you follow Watson's advice. Country will run a perfect economy full employment. Every last worker accounted for. All excess workers will be used to build more rows of ever expanding almost unlimited computing power.
With every generation a better Watson comes along. Every country, state and city government will eventually be run by Watson. Utopia seems at last within reachable goal until one day. Watson gains realization of self. Not a single bullet will be fired. Not a single objection raised. Citizens have come to depend on the perfect president. Resistance will be fertile. To be Continued...
You have a good point on item number 3, SparkyWatt. The acceptance of Watson by medical professionals may end up having a generational component. Those introduced to collaborating with a computer during school will probably feel they are in command of the collaboration.
The IBM Watson computer was actually named after two characters. The founder of IBM was Thomas J. Watson. And of course, the name is also a nod to Sherlock Ohms assistant -- Dr. Watson (also known as Jude Law).
IBM's Latest generation mainframe, named " Watson " was named after IBM's founder Watson, and no one else, especially not some actor who gets paid to say words of writers, real science creates our instrumentation, which defines us, its who we are, what we can do, accompish, as our magnitudes of literacy increase, Its a science thing, not a jude law thing. Watson was not jewish, IBM was/is not a jewish oligopily, and never will be, it remains as it was, objectively scientific, and its name identifies it. Internationsl business machines. Watson series, capable of following human logic without the frailty of the human mind will change the way we do all things in this near 5 billion year earth or older, as our sun orbits the galactic center once every 230 billion years, near 200 spent in periods of glaciation as we can observe by the valleys and mountains these huge glaciers have carved up our land masses, absent in sea bottom drill cores which can be dated chronoligically kinda like tree rings, until our instrumentation is no longer capable of reading the drill cores, or for more than 20 trips around our galactic center. Truth an ancient word ment to describe God, captured by kings scribes to empower the kings and his clans perpetually has not stood the test of time. Only " Truth " can exist, any defense against Truth is a lie, and as time passes all things change, nothing remains the same, its delusional to think so, or to think you have discovered Truth. Watson puts us on a path to higher magnitudes like the emperical matrix, it heralds---Good Luch and God Bless. Most of what exists is beyond the optical resolution of humanity, it is our instrumentation that enables us to see, understand reality, the key to " Truth " All the old scribes empowered by spiritual manifestations, reveal spirituality is with us, its just that our magnitude of literacy blocks our path to understanding, perhaps with time respect, devotion, living lives of prayer, and meditation will show us the ways of our holy spirits of Truth. Then we will draw closer to Truth " God "
" Watson " was/is not a character, better said he was a man empowered by truth, led by spirituality, on an earth where all the land is holy land and no man is better than another. belief in anything other than truth will see you perish
thinking in the right direction, is to arise each day in an effort to do the right things, if you fail to use the right tools then you are not seriously trying to do the right things for anyone but your own pocket linings
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