IBM’s AI Watson was apparently on par with our human experts on how to proceed with the cancer diagnosis and then went a few steps further.
At the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, Watson was tested on 1,000 cancer diagnoses made by human experts. Watson recommended the same treatment as the oncologists 99% of the cases. In 30% of the cases, Watson found a treatment option the human doctors missed. Some treatments were based on research papers that the doctors had not read. More than 160,000 cancer research papers are published a year. Other treatment options might have surfaced in a new clinical trial the oncologists had not yet read or seen announced.
You cannot help to wonder if this will make our top professionals more reliant on AI than rather than increasing their own knowledge. I guess only time will be the telling factor.
