What [Jeopardy] viewers might not realize when they watch the quiz show’s first man vs. machine competition is that they might be catching a glimpse of technology that could radically transform health care delivery within the next decade. The company that revolutionized the personal computer industry in the 20th century has the potential to do the same for health care in the 21st century.
Performing well on Jeopardy and diagnosing sick patients have similar prerequisites: a broad fund of knowledge, ability to process subtlety and ambiguity in natural language, efficient time management, and probabilistic assessment of different possibilities. Like Jeopardy clues, a patient’s symptoms, medical history, physical exam findings and laboratory results present clues that must be synthesized into a differential diagnosis. While computer systems to assist clinical decision-making have existed for decades, adoption of legacy systems has been hindered by rigid algorithms that require translation of natural language into machine language and heavy reliance on user input.
But it won’t stop there, will it? Watson is so much faster, stores so much more information than a human brain,learns much more permanently and lives, like God, in the eternal present, that its presence will remove our need to store anything in our heads. Lke Jeopardy, we will only ask questions and the answers will be delivered.
Suppose, for example, we used Watson to make stock market predictions: Every millions of data increase will improve its probability search and learning mode…. and then what? In fact, we have Hal now, waiting to be used. to be given the power to make decisions beyond individual human capabilities. Oh, Jeopardy indeed!
Larry