Article: Consequences of the creation of IBM Watson
Nowadays, technology is developing at an incredible speed. Such a huge amount of breakthroughs and accomplishments in various fields of science obstruct people from understanding the real potential of each attainment. One of the scientific achievements which does not have a lot of attention among the people is the creation of IBM Watson.
This paper reviews the main philosophy and goals behind this project tries to persuade people and give reasons for the fact that the work which has been done will force our lives to change in the near future. So, in order to be ready for these drastic changes, one should understand how jobs will change, which one of them will become obsolete, and what kind of knowledge and skills will be required in the near future.
Because of time and size constraints, this review cannot take into consideration all technological capabilities of the supercomputer and, therefore, to analyze the effects of it on all major fields of study and jobs. As a consequence, it was decided to concentrate on the two most valuable and important areas of human life: healthcare and business.
IBM Watson
Prior to talking about the effects of the development of IBM Watson on the world economics and labor market, it is of the main importance to understand what IBM Watson actually is, how it differs from previous solutions, and what its capabilities are. IBM Watson is a new type of computer program, an attempt to create a machine that would understand sophisticated and ambiguous written human language. The original goal of the new supercomputer was “to have computers start to interact in natural human terms across a range of applications and processes, understanding the questions that humans ask and providing answers that humans can understand and justify” (Brodkin, 2010) in order to take a part in a well known American tv game “Jeopardy!”, which it successfully won. The result was achievable because Watson uses a “radically new type of computing, different from the programmable systems that preceded it.” (IBM Watson, 2014)
Conventional programs are based on logic and strict rules in order to derive mathematically precise answers, whereas the Watson’s approach uses fuzzy logic and cognitive computing in order to derive highly probable information from volumes of data that mathematically precise algorithms and logic fail to derive. A few examples of programs for which the Watson’s approach would be more beneficial than the conventional one are a diagnosing tool, retirement portfolio advisor, or a program which creates new recipes. (IBM Watson, 2014) So, what Watson really does is that it structures all information and tries to find its hidden patterns.
Watson in Healthcare System
Because of the Watson’s ability to think critically, make decisions based on priorities and evidence, it makes him the best clinical decision support systems in the world. (Chaudhry, 2012)
Recently, Watson “studied” medicine and, as a consequence, now it is a “lung cancer specialist and expert in the arcane branch of health insurance known as utilization management.” (Upbin, 2013a) In addition, it is important to mention that he already has patients in several hospitals in the USA. To make it more affordable for hospitals, the size of the Watson was reduced from a size of a bedroom to a size of a pizza server which any hospital can afford managing. (Upbin, 2013a)
As a result of all technological innovations, IBM Watson gives very good results, which are much better than any other machine diagnoses: it is “accurate in its decisions 90%.” (Upbin, 2013a) Right now “Watson isn’t taking over the work from doctors,” (Upbin, 2013b) but one should understand that in the near future a certain segment of jobs in the health-care system will be obsolete due to automatization process.
One of the primary goals of IBM Watson is to diagnose and form a suitable treatment plan for cancer patients. To fulfill this goal, Watson has been used in Anderson Cancer Center for over 3 years “to help doctors match patients with clinical trials, observe and fine-tune treatment plans, and assess risks as part of M. D. Anderson’s ‘Moon Shots’ mission to eliminate cancer.” (Greenemeier, 2013) Unfortunately, due to the facts that “only a handful of published articles are high-quality, randomized trials,” (Jaklevic, 2017) and “in many cases, oncologists have to choose between drugs that have never been directly compared in a randomized trial,” (Jaklevic, 2017) it will take Watson a lot of time to learn what kind of drugs can be used in a particular case, for a particular patient, and, as a consequence, it will take a while for the project to show its potential and to actually start helping people.
Despite all problems, Watson is developing at an unprecedented speed. It will not take too much time for Watson to be developed to a state when it will not need a human help. Therefore, because of total autonomy and ability to work in the cloud, the health-care economics will be shattered: not only a lot of jobs will be obsolete, but there is a chance that the presence of medical centers will not be necessary for humans. One of the possible ways of development of Watson is either an online service of diagnosing or a physical device which will not only derive its conclusion from patient’s feeling, but also from some medical checks, like a blood work. Eventually, the whole diagnosing will come to the state when every person will have a personal medical pod which will use an advanced artificial intelligence like Watson to diagnose any diseases.
Watson in Business
Despite the fact that health-care is definitely an extremely important area of concentration for the IBM Corporation, they also pay a lot of attention to business. One of the main goals of IBM and IBM Watson, in particular, is to create a working environment that will enhance human abilities and improve their communication skills inside a project in order for them to become “more effective, not merely more efficient.” (IBM Corp, 2016)
With IBM Watson the company made an attempt to improve such fundamental elements of work as “creating and consuming content, working in teams, planning and prioritizing, collaborating and communicating, following processes.” (IBM Corp, 2016) Not only does IBM provide an environment for employees to communicate with each other, keep and update their plans and goals, but it also provides a cognitive system that can understand, analyse and structure the information from “audio, video, images and conversations,” (IBM Corp, 2016) sources which used to be unavailable for previous types of business computer solutions. Because of the ability of the cognitive system to understand and produce the written human language, to learn and adapt to new terms and jargons, to understand the meaning of a text, rather than just symbols, it greatly helps employees to highlight the most important information by eliminating noise and interruptions. (IBM Corp, 2016) For different jobs, Watson provides different tools to improve their skills and abilities, but the main purpose of the system is to structure the information in an understandable way.
In addition to the business environment, IBM allows software developers to use the power and abilities of Watson in their own projects. One example of such projects is a “Chef Watson” cooking application which uses the cognitive abilities of the IBM’s system in order to create new unique recipes based on your personal preferences. For now, “neither IBM nor Bon Appétit is claiming that Chef Watson can replace the judgment of an experienced home chef,” (Wilson, 2014) but there is no doubt that in the near future home cooks like “Chef Watson” will replace home chefs, doing their job faster and with more creativity.
Conclusion
As you could see, IBM Watson has a huge potential in a lot of different areas: healthcare, business, education, marketing, social sciences, and so on. The most important thing to remember is that Watson is a new type of computer system which can read, understand, and think, which makes us closer to the creation of an artificial intelligence than ever before.
The implications of Watson in healthcare are not noticeable right now, but with a proper research team, Watson will achieve enormous results in the future, which will shatter the world’s healthcare. Diagnosing and cancer plans are only a small part of what Watson will be able to do. Because of that, a lot of jobs will become obsolete, so doctors have to closely monitor results and achievements that Watson obtains.
Because business is such an important topic these days, it is of the most importance to keep track of researches that relate to the business environment in any way. For example, it is clear that Watson will have a lot of different impacts in the sphere of business, therefore everyone should keep an eye on this project.
Although IBM Watson is not that much developed yet to make any jobs obsolete or to change people’s lives, there definitely will be a time when the automatization process will shatter the world economics, and people must be prepared for it.
Article link: overleaf.com
Bibliography
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- (IBM Watson, 2014) IBM Watson. (Oct 7, 2014). IBM Watson: How it Works [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Xcmh1LQB9I
- (Chaudhry, 2012) Chaudhry, B. (2012) Putting Watson to Work: Watson in Healthcare. IBM. Retrieved November 11, 2013.
- (Upbin, 2013a) Upbin, B. (Feb 8, 2013). IBM's Watson Gets Its First Piece Of Business In Healthcare. Forbes. Retrieved May 11, 2017.
- (Upbin, 2013b) Upbin, B. (Oct 18, 2013). IBM's Watson Now Tackles Clinical Trials At MD Anderson Cancer Center. Forbes. Retrieved May 11, 2017.
- (Greenemeier, 2013) Greenemeier, L. (Nov 13, 2013) Will IBM’s Watson Usher in a New Era of Cognitive Computing?. Scientific American. Retrieved May 15, 2017.
- (Jaklevic, 2017) Jaklevic, M. (Feb 23, 2017) MD Anderson Cancer Center’s IBM Watson project fails, and so did the journalism related to it. Healthnewsreview. Retrieved May 15, 2017.
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- (Wilson, 2014) Wilson, M. (30 Jun 2014) IBM’s Watson Is Now A Cooking App With Infinite Recipes. Fastcodesign. Retrieved May 16, 2017.
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