Candida
Vitale and the other fellows at MD Anderson’s leukemia treatment center
had known one another for only a few months, but they already were very
tight. The nine of them shared a small office and were always hanging
out on weekends.
But she wasn’t quite sure what to make of the new guy.
Above:
Watson, the computer brain of “Jeopardy!” fame, is training to be the world’s first artificial-intelligence expert in cancer. This is the program’s physical embodiment in an IBM server room in New York City. (Andrew Spear for The Washington Post)
The Human Upgrade:
Using their ideas and their billions, the visionaries who created Silicon Valley’s biggest technology firms are trying to transform the most complicated system in existence: the human body.
Click to read Part I: Tech titans’ latest project: Defy death
Click to read Part II: The revolution will be digitized
Watson, the computer brain of “Jeopardy!” fame, is training to be the world’s first artificial-intelligence expert in cancer. This is the program’s physical embodiment in an IBM server room in New York City. (Andrew Spear for The Washington Post)
The Human Upgrade:
Using their ideas and their billions, the visionaries who created Silicon Valley’s biggest technology firms are trying to transform the most complicated system in existence: the human body.
Click to read Part I: Tech titans’ latest project: Defy death
Click to read Part II: The revolution will be digitized
Rumor had it that he had finished med school in two years and had a
photographic memory of thousands of journal articles and relevant
clinical trials. When the fellows were asked to summarize patients’
records for the senior faculty in the mornings, he always seemed to have
the best answers.
“I was surprised,” said Vitale, a 31-year-old who received her MD in Italy. “Even if you work all night, it would be impossible to be able to put this much information together like that.”
The new guy’s name was a mouthful, so many of his colleagues simply called him by his nickname: Watson.
Four years after destroying human competitors on “Jeopardy!” to win a suspense-filled tournament watched by millions, the IBM computer brain is everywhere. It’s done stints as a call center operator and hotel concierge, and been spotted helping people pick songs. It’s even published its own cookbook, with 231 pages of what the company calls “recipes for innovation.” (The reviews haven’t been flattering — one foodie declared one of Chef Watson’s creations “the worst burrito I’ve ever had.”)
But these feats were essentially gimmicks.
“I was surprised,” said Vitale, a 31-year-old who received her MD in Italy. “Even if you work all night, it would be impossible to be able to put this much information together like that.”
The new guy’s name was a mouthful, so many of his colleagues simply called him by his nickname: Watson.
Four years after destroying human competitors on “Jeopardy!” to win a suspense-filled tournament watched by millions, the IBM computer brain is everywhere. It’s done stints as a call center operator and hotel concierge, and been spotted helping people pick songs. It’s even published its own cookbook, with 231 pages of what the company calls “recipes for innovation.” (The reviews haven’t been flattering — one foodie declared one of Chef Watson’s creations “the worst burrito I’ve ever had.”)
But these feats were essentially gimmicks.
IBM is now training Watson to be a cancer specialist. The idea is to
use Watson’s increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence to find
personalized treatments for every cancer patient by comparing disease
and treatment histories, genetic data, scans and symptoms against the
vast universe of medical knowledge.
Such precision targeting is possible to a limited extent, but it can take weeks of dedicated sleuthing by a team of researchers. Watson would be able to make this type of treatment recommendation in mere minutes.
Such precision targeting is possible to a limited extent, but it can take weeks of dedicated sleuthing by a team of researchers. Watson would be able to make this type of treatment recommendation in mere minutes.
The IBM program is one of several new aggressive health-care projects
that aim to sift through the huge pools of data created by people’s
records and daily routines and then identify patterns and connections to
predict needs. It is a revolutionary approach to medicine and health
care that is likely to have significant social, economic and political
consequences.
Lynda Chin, a physician-scientist and associate vice chancellor for the University of Texas system who is overseeing the Watson project at MD Anderson Cancer Center, said these types of programs are key to “democratizing” medical treatment and eliminating the disparity that exists between those with access to the best doctors and those without.
“I see technology like this as a way to really break free from our current health-care system, which is very much limited by the community providers. If you want expert care you have to go to an expert center,” she said, “but there are never enough of those to go around.”
Instead of having to find specialists in a different city, photocopy and send all the patient’s files to them, and spend countless hours researching the medical literature, a doctor could simply consult Watson, she said.
Jho Low, the 33-year-old billionaire who is bankrolling the $50 million MD Anderson project with Watson, said the effort grew out of his grandfather’s treatment for leukemia in Malaysia. Low said that he felt fortunate to be able to connect his grandfather’s doctors remotely with MD Anderson specialists to devise the best treatment plan. He believes everyone, rich or poor, should have the same access to that kind of expertise.
Lynda Chin, a physician-scientist and associate vice chancellor for the University of Texas system who is overseeing the Watson project at MD Anderson Cancer Center, said these types of programs are key to “democratizing” medical treatment and eliminating the disparity that exists between those with access to the best doctors and those without.
“I see technology like this as a way to really break free from our current health-care system, which is very much limited by the community providers. If you want expert care you have to go to an expert center,” she said, “but there are never enough of those to go around.”
Instead of having to find specialists in a different city, photocopy and send all the patient’s files to them, and spend countless hours researching the medical literature, a doctor could simply consult Watson, she said.
Jho Low, the 33-year-old billionaire who is bankrolling the $50 million MD Anderson project with Watson, said the effort grew out of his grandfather’s treatment for leukemia in Malaysia. Low said that he felt fortunate to be able to connect his grandfather’s doctors remotely with MD Anderson specialists to devise the best treatment plan. He believes everyone, rich or poor, should have the same access to that kind of expertise.
“This is very personal to my family. It is really something we have
gone through and seen what kind of difference it can make,” said Low,
who is a graduate of the Wharton School at the University of
Pennsylvania and runs one of Asia’s most successful investment firms.
Low is part of an influential new movement in scientific research driven by young philanthropists and tech titans who have faith that the chips, software programs, algorithms and big data that powered the information revolution can also be used to understand, upgrade and heal the human body.
But the Watson project and similar initiatives also have raised speculation — and alarm — that companies are seeking to replace the nation’s approximately 900,000 physicians with software that will have access to everyone’s sensitive personal health information.
While there’s much debate about the extent to which technology is destroying jobs, recent research has driven concern. A 2013 paper by economists at the University of Oxford calculated the probability of 702 occupations being automated or “roboticized” out of existence and found that a startling 47 percent of American jobs — from paralegals to taxi drivers — could disappear in coming years. Similar research by MIT business professors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee has shown that this trend may be accelerating and that we are at the dawn of a “second machine age.”
Scientists are already testing baker bots that can whip up pastries, machines that can teach math in the classroom and robot anesthesiologists.
Many physicians and academics in medicine have come to view Watson’s work with reservation, despite reassurances from IBM officials that they are trying not to replace humans but to help them do their jobs better.
“I think a lot of folks in medicine, quite frankly, tend to be afraid of technology like this,” said Iltifat Husain, an assistant professor at the Wake Forest School of Medicine.
Husain, who directs the mobile app curriculum at Wake Forest, agrees that computer systems like Watson will probably vastly improve patients’ quality of care. But he is emphatic that computers will never truly replace human doctors for the simple reason that the machines lack instinct and empathy.
“There are a lot of things you can deduce by what a patient is not telling you, how they interact with their families, their mood, their mannerisms. They don’t look at the patient as a whole,” Husain said. “This is where algorithms fail you.”
Low is part of an influential new movement in scientific research driven by young philanthropists and tech titans who have faith that the chips, software programs, algorithms and big data that powered the information revolution can also be used to understand, upgrade and heal the human body.
But the Watson project and similar initiatives also have raised speculation — and alarm — that companies are seeking to replace the nation’s approximately 900,000 physicians with software that will have access to everyone’s sensitive personal health information.
While there’s much debate about the extent to which technology is destroying jobs, recent research has driven concern. A 2013 paper by economists at the University of Oxford calculated the probability of 702 occupations being automated or “roboticized” out of existence and found that a startling 47 percent of American jobs — from paralegals to taxi drivers — could disappear in coming years. Similar research by MIT business professors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee has shown that this trend may be accelerating and that we are at the dawn of a “second machine age.”
Scientists are already testing baker bots that can whip up pastries, machines that can teach math in the classroom and robot anesthesiologists.
Many physicians and academics in medicine have come to view Watson’s work with reservation, despite reassurances from IBM officials that they are trying not to replace humans but to help them do their jobs better.
“I think a lot of folks in medicine, quite frankly, tend to be afraid of technology like this,” said Iltifat Husain, an assistant professor at the Wake Forest School of Medicine.
Husain, who directs the mobile app curriculum at Wake Forest, agrees that computer systems like Watson will probably vastly improve patients’ quality of care. But he is emphatic that computers will never truly replace human doctors for the simple reason that the machines lack instinct and empathy.
“There are a lot of things you can deduce by what a patient is not telling you, how they interact with their families, their mood, their mannerisms. They don’t look at the patient as a whole,” Husain said. “This is where algorithms fail you.”
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