Next up for supercomputer Watson: Curing cancer?
In the cancer program, the computer will be considering what treatment is most likely to succeed. In the insurance program, it will consider what treatment should be authorized for payment.
Watson _ actually named for IBM founder Thomas Watson and not Sherlock Holmes’ friend _ has been trained in medicine through pilot programs at Indianapolis-based WellPoint and at Sloan-Kettering in New York.
Manoj Saxena, an IBM general manager, said the supercomputer has ingested 1,500 lung cancer cases from Sloan-Kettering records, plus 2 million pages of text from journals, textbooks and treatment guidelines.
It also learned “like a medical student,” by being corrected when it was questioned by doctors and came up with wrong answers, Saxena said in an interview.









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I’m more interested in it digesting all the text on the web and identifying patterns that at this point are completely beyond our understanding. OK, honestly, I want it to explain why liberals think the way they do.
Paul-Cincy on February 13, 2013 at 6:04 PM
Liberals don’t think. They react. Typically from sloth and greed.
Medicine already is and has been using what the Marxist Media derided as “Star Wars.” The same IFF Indentification Friend or Foe technology which sorts through multitudes of patterns and data points to determine whether an incoming missile is that or a friendly aircraft can also be applied to scanning cells to differentiate healthy cells from invading bad ones. Thanks Ronaldus Magnus for thinking and doing way beyond Liberalism’s mocking ignoramuses.
viking01 on February 13, 2013 at 6:24 PM
Sorry. When I saw it on Jeopardy! and it answered “Vancouver” for an American airport it kinda soured me on it’s abilities. And computers are supposed to replace doctors? I’d rather go to a barber.
Mitoch55 on February 13, 2013 at 6:32 PM
Located directly east of I-5 and just north of Highway 14 and the Columbia River, Pearson Field is easily accessible by land and air. The airport is operated by the City of Vancouver, Washington, which owns 61.8 acres of the 134.4-acre airport site.
Paul-Cincy on February 13, 2013 at 6:44 PM
Haven’t they been curing cancer for quite a while now?
It’s right up there with World Peace.
I’ll believe it when I see it.
MetaThought on February 13, 2013 at 6:57 PM
Yeah, but can it balance the Federal budget?
TexasDan on February 13, 2013 at 7:02 PM
WOPR: Would you like to play a game?
portlandon on February 13, 2013 at 7:12 PM
My mistake, it wasn’t Vancouver. It was Toronto.
Yeah…a computer that mistakes Toronto as a US city. That’s the one I want diagnosing my medical problems.
Mitoch55 on February 14, 2013 at 9:47 AM