Whoa! I just thought of an interesting scenario. That article says that the first application they intend to use Watson for his cancer treatment recommendations. Suppose they feed Watson the entire corpus of cancer research, and he concludes that cancer treatment has no effect on the prognosis. Some experts believe that to be the case. Some relevant quotes are below. The gist of the skeptical view is that diagnosis has improved but the prognosis has not. In other words, they used to know you had cancer five years before you died, but now they find out 10 years before you die, so five-year survival rates have doubled. But the treatment action does no good.
Here are the quotes: "Overall, cancer mortality in the United States is unchanged in the last 25 years and higher now than it was in 1950 (even after taking into account the aging population) because a rise in the number of people developing cancer has swamped any improvements in treatment. As recently as the mid 1990s, an expert trying to measure the benefits of medical care ignored cancer because he considered the effects of treatment negligible. ...” NCHS, Health, United States, 2003, p. 136 . . . [A] task force assembled by the public health service . . . refused to recommend screening for lung cancer or diabetes. Even if people with these chronic conditions go to doctors for their problems early, most will continue to deteriorate." J. P. Bunker et al., "Improving Health: Measuring Effects of Medical Care," Milbank Quarterly 77 (1994), p. 225 Quoted by Farley and Cohen, "Prescription for a Healthy Nation," Beacon, 2005 So imagine sometime this year they set up Watson in a medical center, and a doctor submits a series of test results and observations of a patient. They ask Watson, “what treatment do you recommend?” Watson says: “The benefits of all known treatments are negligible. [CITE NCHS] The patient will continue to deteriorate no matter what you do. [CITE BUNKER] I suggest you let the person die in peace, rather than poking needles into him for no reason. Human suffering without purpose is unethical. [E. WIESEL]” They keep submitting different patient profiles, but Watson keeps coming up with this answer. The machine has no financial or emotional investment in the success of treatments, so it sees reality clearly. Now there's an interesting SF story! Coming soon to a hospital near you. These days a lot of things that used to be SF are finally becoming real. - Jed
