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by kenjackson 5587 days ago
Worse, by definition they do not understand what they do not understand and so cannot avoid them

Kasparov didn't seem to see what I did. Watson seemed very consistent in knowing what it did not know. There was maybe two questions I recall where it actually got the question wrong with 50%+ certainty. I believe it answered, "leg" when it should have been "mising a leg". The other it answered the 20s when the answer was the 10s. And I think for neither of those the percentage was much beyond 50%.

Also Kasparov seems to miss that Watson in medicine would be used with humans. I doubt a doctor will say, "Watson says to cut off his left leg -- I would just given him aspirin for the headache, oh well. Hopefully cutting off this leg makes his head feel better."

What Watson hopefully will do is help diagnosis. Especially tricky ones.

There's a great story in a book I read, I wish I could recall the name, but it begins with a lady who has some stomach issue that she has for like 20 years. Everyone thinks its in her head. She finally happens upon a doctor who happens to have seen something like this before, she gets diagnosed and healed. But she had to live with it for like 20 years after seeing doctor after doctor. Watson would be able to greatly help situations like this, I hope.

UPDATE: The book is "How Doctor's Think". Here's an excerpt that talks about this case, http://harvardmedicine.hms.harvard.edu/bulletin/winter2007/7... -- just in case anyone cares. :-)

1 comments

Totally agree. It's shocking how many doctors seem to be lacking basic knowledge about things like drug sideeffects or lesser known symptoms about common diseases. You obviously still need both specialists and general practitioners but I think it's time to revisit the idea of a medical expert system .