Fracasso do IBM Watson na Medicina

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However, with all the sound and fury that attends artificial intelligence and machine learning today, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that these are early days. Failures might be as likely as successes.

That is a hard and expensive lesson that IBM and one of its customers — the MD Anderson Cancer Centre of Texas — have learned over the last five years.

And it is important not to sheet all the blame home to IBM. PricewaterhouseCoopers was paid $US23 million for its part of the project yet, despite contractual stipulations, the program was never piloted. Likewise, MD Anderson hardly followed the project management textbook, and its travails have as much to do with poor governance — the traditional killer of technology projects through the ages. The CEO of MD Anderson, Dr Ronald DePinho, resigned yesterday, admitting a failure of management. His wife, Dr Lynda Chin, was the leader of the project.

An audit of the failed AI project by the University of Texas graphically showcases all the ways in which the dreams of artificial intelligence can turn into nightmares and multimillion-dollar black holes.

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The first stage got rolling after an initial payment of $US2.4 million. Four years later, the project had blown out to more than $US60 million. The research fund was overdrawn by nearly ten million dollars, and the Oncology Expert Advisor developed by IBM was little better than vapourware. It remains unusable.

Fonte: aqui

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Will Watson eventually make a difference in improving health outcomes and lowering costs? Probably, says Stephen Kraus, a partner at the VC firm Bessemer Venture Partners who focuses on health care and has invested in AI health-care startups. “It’s all for real,” says Kraus. “This isn’t about putting out vaporware in order to boost stock prices.” But Kraus joins most experts in cautioning against unrealistic timelines or promises—some of which have come from IBM itself. “This is hard,” he says. “It’s not happening today, and it might not be happening in five years. And it’s not going to replace doctors.”

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