NewsReport: IBM Watson Recommended 'Unsafe and Incorrect' Cancer Treatment

Report: IBM Watson Recommended ‘Unsafe and Incorrect’ Cancer Treatment

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Reports in Stat News and Gizmodo claim that internal IBM documents show that Watson for Oncology made “unsafe and incorrect treatment recommendations” multiple times. For example, in one case, a 65-year-old man with lung cancer was recommended a drug that can cause hemorrhaging, even though the man was already experiencing severe bleeding and shouldn’t have been a candidate for the drug.

The report says the problems may have been caused by training Watson on hypothetical patient data rather than on real data.

“This product is a piece of s**t,” a doctor at Florida’s Jupiter Hospital said to IBM. “We bought it for marketing and with hopes that you would achieve the vision. We can’t use it for most cases.”

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