[Vo]:Suppose Watson tells people cancer treatment does not work?
Whoa! I just thought of an interesting scenario. That article says that the first application they intend to use Watson for his cancer treatment recommendations. Suppose they feed Watson the entire corpus of cancer research, and he concludes that cancer treatment has no effect on the prognosis. Some experts believe that to be the case. Some relevant quotes are below. The gist of the skeptical view is that diagnosis has improved but the prognosis has not. In other words, they used to know you had cancer five years before you died, but now they find out 10 years before you die, so five-year survival rates have doubled. But the treatment action does no good. Here are the quotes: Overall, cancer mortality in the United States is unchanged in the last 25 years and higher now than it was in 1950 (even after taking into account the aging population) because a rise in the number of people developing cancer has swamped any improvements in treatment. As recently as the mid 1990s, an expert trying to measure the benefits of medical care ignored cancer because he considered the effects of treatment negligible. ...” NCHS, Health, United States, 2003, p. 136 . . . [A] task force assembled by the public health service . . . refused to recommend screening for lung cancer or diabetes. Even if people with these chronic conditions go to doctors for their problems early, most will continue to deteriorate. J. P. Bunker et al., Improving Health: Measuring Effects of Medical Care, Milbank Quarterly 77 (1994), p. 225 Quoted by Farley and Cohen, Prescription for a Healthy Nation, Beacon, 2005 So imagine sometime this year they set up Watson in a medical center, and a doctor submits a series of test results and observations of a patient. They ask Watson, “what treatment do you recommend?” Watson says: “The benefits of all known treatments are negligible. [CITE NCHS] The patient will continue to deteriorate no matter what you do. [CITE BUNKER] I suggest you let the person die in peace, rather than poking needles into him for no reason. Human suffering without purpose is unethical. [E. WIESEL]” They keep submitting different patient profiles, but Watson keeps coming up with this answer. The machine has no financial or emotional investment in the success of treatments, so it sees reality clearly. Now there's an interesting SF story! Coming soon to a hospital near you. These days a lot of things that used to be SF are finally becoming real. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Suppose Watson tells people cancer treatment does not work?
Only if you don't feed it any info from natural therapies (and alternative). On Fri, Jan 18, 2013 at 11:55 AM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.comwrote: Whoa! I just thought of an interesting scenario. That article says that the first application they intend to use Watson for his cancer treatment recommendations. Suppose they feed Watson the entire corpus of cancer research, and he concludes that cancer treatment has no effect on the prognosis. Some experts believe that to be the case. Some relevant quotes are below. The gist of the skeptical view is that diagnosis has improved but the prognosis has not. In other words, they used to know you had cancer five years before you died, but now they find out 10 years before you die, so five-year survival rates have doubled. But the treatment action does no good. Here are the quotes: Overall, cancer mortality in the United States is unchanged in the last 25 years and higher now than it was in 1950 (even after taking into account the aging population) because a rise in the number of people developing cancer has swamped any improvements in treatment. As recently as the mid 1990s, an expert trying to measure the benefits of medical care ignored cancer because he considered the effects of treatment negligible. ...” NCHS, Health, United States, 2003, p. 136 . . . [A] task force assembled by the public health service . . . refused to recommend screening for lung cancer or diabetes. Even if people with these chronic conditions go to doctors for their problems early, most will continue to deteriorate. J. P. Bunker et al., Improving Health: Measuring Effects of Medical Care, Milbank Quarterly 77 (1994), p. 225 Quoted by Farley and Cohen, Prescription for a Healthy Nation, Beacon, 2005 So imagine sometime this year they set up Watson in a medical center, and a doctor submits a series of test results and observations of a patient. They ask Watson, “what treatment do you recommend?” Watson says: “The benefits of all known treatments are negligible. [CITE NCHS] The patient will continue to deteriorate no matter what you do. [CITE BUNKER] I suggest you let the person die in peace, rather than poking needles into him for no reason. Human suffering without purpose is unethical. [E. WIESEL]” They keep submitting different patient profiles, but Watson keeps coming up with this answer. The machine has no financial or emotional investment in the success of treatments, so it sees reality clearly. Now there's an interesting SF story! Coming soon to a hospital near you. These days a lot of things that used to be SF are finally becoming real. - Jed
RE: [Vo]:Suppose Watson tells people cancer treatment does not work?
From: Jed Rothwell Whoa! I just thought of an interesting scenario. That article says that the first application they intend to use Watson for his cancer treatment recommendations. Suppose they feed Watson the entire corpus of cancer research, and he concludes that cancer treatment has no effect on the prognosis. Some experts believe that to be the case. What if the entire corpus of physics is loaded, and Watson concludes that LENR is the superior energy solution for the future of humanity, far more so than hot fusion or fission ? ANS: The mainstream hegemony will be shouting from their ivory towers that this is same computer that was infected with Tourette syndrome not too long ago . it has suffered a recurrence and simply cannot be trusted: Wipe that hard disk clean and send Watson back home (or back to Holmes). we have to protect our phony baloney jobs.
Re: [Vo]:Suppose Watson tells people cancer treatment does not work?
On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 3:14 PM, Jones Beene jone...@pacbell.net wrote: ** What if the entire corpus of physics is loaded, and Watson concludes that LENR is the superior energy solution for the future of humanity, far more so than hot fusion or fission ? ** What if Watson concludes LENR is a load of baloney? [mg]
Re: [Vo]:Suppose Watson tells people cancer treatment does not work?
Most people would not be surprised, so it's kind of boring. 2013/1/17 Mark Gibbs mgi...@gibbs.com On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 3:14 PM, Jones Beene jone...@pacbell.net wrote: ** What if the entire corpus of physics is loaded, and Watson concludes that LENR is the superior energy solution for the future of humanity, far more so than hot fusion or fission ? ** What if Watson concludes LENR is a load of baloney? [mg] -- Daniel Rocha - RJ danieldi...@gmail.com
Re: [Vo]:Suppose Watson tells people cancer treatment does not work?
Just consider, whatever conclusion, other than I don't know, Watson might come to, it will please no one no matter how logical it might be ... or rather seem to be. And rightly so because unless Watson concludes I don't know the question of whether Watson had enough data or the right data or the correct deductive process or fill in your objection would still exist. As has been pointed out many times on this list, today's truth frequently becomes yesterday's lack of understanding. [m] On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 3:28 PM, Daniel Rocha danieldi...@gmail.com wrote: Most people would not be surprised, so it's kind of boring. 2013/1/17 Mark Gibbs mgi...@gibbs.com On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 3:14 PM, Jones Beene jone...@pacbell.net wrote: ** What if the entire corpus of physics is loaded, and Watson concludes that LENR is the superior energy solution for the future of humanity, far more so than hot fusion or fission ? ** What if Watson concludes LENR is a load of baloney? [mg] -- Daniel Rocha - RJ danieldi...@gmail.com
Re: [Vo]:Suppose Watson tells people cancer treatment does not work?
Jones Beene jone...@pacbell.net wrote: What if the entire corpus of physics is loaded, and Watson concludes that LENR is the superior energy solution for the future of humanity, far more so than hot fusion or fission ? That would be hysterical! - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Suppose Watson tells people cancer treatment does not work?
Mark Gibbs mgi...@gibbs.com wrote: What if Watson concludes LENR is a load of baloney? Seriously? That would not surprise me. I have been reading about Watson and the methodology, because I am interested in natural language processing, translation and so on. Watson does not do much synthesizing. It parses the natural language sources, determines what they mean (in a sense) and then matches them to the inquiry. That's fabulous, and useful, but not creative. Suppose you input into Watson only mass media sources, the Scientific American, Nature and a few other leading journals. You do not add anything from J. Electroanal. Chem. or other specialized journals that have actual papers about cold fusion. Then you ask Watson what is cold fusion. It would say something similar to what Ouellette wrote; i.e., it is pathological science, never replicated, blah, blah, blah: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/2012/10/29/genie-in-a-bottle-the-case-against-cold-fusion/ This article, along with everything else in the Sci. Am. and Nature about cold fusion, is a long string of fact-free nonsense, but it is perfectly grammatical and it could be parsed and regurgitated by Watson. Ouellette herself is essentially acting as a computer. She does no fact checking. She does not try to eliminate internal inconsistencies. She simply parrots whatever she read in Wikipedia, or some other Internet sewer. Watson echoes what it reads. If you were to input all of the papers at LENR-CANR.org into Watson than its response would echo actual, peer-reviewed scientific literature, and the conclusions therein, which are overwhelmingly positive. Note that I was only kidding in the first message in this thread. There is no chance Watson would actually synthesize a general view of cancer treatment, similar to the way a human epidemiologist would. I think it will only search out specific papers and studies to address specific questions. It does actually understand the conclusions in these paper at some level, since it can tell that a statement is positive or negative; i.e., treatment X is likely to be effective for disease Y. (Or that it has not been found effective.) What it cannot do is conclude that thousands of papers have statements describing effective treatments, but a study made outside the field by epidemiologists proves that all of these papers are exaggerated or wrong. That is a very high level of generalization -- or abstraction if you will. That would be finding an answer far afield of the set of usual answers, with no contextual clues or linked keywords. I do not think Watson is capable of it. I suppose that someday computers will be capable of this. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Suppose Watson tells people cancer treatment does not work?
Watson would be shut down due to lack of funding. Dave -Original Message- From: Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com To: vortex-l vortex-l@eskimo.com Sent: Thu, Jan 17, 2013 7:30 pm Subject: Re: [Vo]:Suppose Watson tells people cancer treatment does not work? Jones Beene jone...@pacbell.net wrote: What if the entire corpusof physics is loaded, and Watson concludes that LENR is the superior energysolution for the future of humanity, far more so than hot fusion or fission ? That would be hysterical! - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Suppose Watson tells people cancer treatment does not work?
From: David Roberson dlrober...@aol.com Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2013 5:04:15 PM Watson would be shut down due to lack of funding. What if the entire corpus of physics is loaded, and Watson concludes that LENR is the superior energy solution for the future of humanity, far more so than hot fusion or fission ? - Jed Watson would be assigned Marvin's job of showing people the way to the bridge. Or to the stock-room. In any case any Watson opinion would be accompanied by a disclaimer of any and all guarantees.
Re: [Vo]:Suppose Watson tells people cancer treatment does not work?
If anyone ever gets serious about advancing artificial intelligence, they'll fund The Hutter Prize for Lossless Compression of Human Knowledgehttp://prize.hutter1.net/at something like the risk adjusted net present value of artificial intelligence. If that happens, truly interesting things will start to emerge. On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 6:50 PM, Jed Rothwell jedrothw...@gmail.com wrote: Mark Gibbs mgi...@gibbs.com wrote: What if Watson concludes LENR is a load of baloney? Seriously? That would not surprise me. I have been reading about Watson and the methodology, because I am interested in natural language processing, translation and so on. Watson does not do much synthesizing. It parses the natural language sources, determines what they mean (in a sense) and then matches them to the inquiry. That's fabulous, and useful, but not creative. Suppose you input into Watson only mass media sources, the Scientific American, Nature and a few other leading journals. You do not add anything from J. Electroanal. Chem. or other specialized journals that have actual papers about cold fusion. Then you ask Watson what is cold fusion. It would say something similar to what Ouellette wrote; i.e., it is pathological science, never replicated, blah, blah, blah: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cocktail-party-physics/2012/10/29/genie-in-a-bottle-the-case-against-cold-fusion/ This article, along with everything else in the Sci. Am. and Nature about cold fusion, is a long string of fact-free nonsense, but it is perfectly grammatical and it could be parsed and regurgitated by Watson. Ouellette herself is essentially acting as a computer. She does no fact checking. She does not try to eliminate internal inconsistencies. She simply parrots whatever she read in Wikipedia, or some other Internet sewer. Watson echoes what it reads. If you were to input all of the papers at LENR-CANR.org into Watson than its response would echo actual, peer-reviewed scientific literature, and the conclusions therein, which are overwhelmingly positive. Note that I was only kidding in the first message in this thread. There is no chance Watson would actually synthesize a general view of cancer treatment, similar to the way a human epidemiologist would. I think it will only search out specific papers and studies to address specific questions. It does actually understand the conclusions in these paper at some level, since it can tell that a statement is positive or negative; i.e., treatment X is likely to be effective for disease Y. (Or that it has not been found effective.) What it cannot do is conclude that thousands of papers have statements describing effective treatments, but a study made outside the field by epidemiologists proves that all of these papers are exaggerated or wrong. That is a very high level of generalization -- or abstraction if you will. That would be finding an answer far afield of the set of usual answers, with no contextual clues or linked keywords. I do not think Watson is capable of it. I suppose that someday computers will be capable of this. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Suppose Watson tells people cancer treatment does not work?
I doubt that Watson can be aware of what you might call high level contradictions. Many people have trouble sensing these. Suppose you ask Watson: Given cancer X in condition Y, what is the best treatment? It goes through the literature and comes up with an answer. Next question: Among public health epidemiologists, what is the consensus of opinion regarding the efficacy of cancer treatments on longevity? Two things: 1. I would not be surprised if Watson can parse this sentence correctly and search the literature for a viable answer. That is just the kind of thing they are training Watson to do. Their parsing algorithms are awesome. They are science fiction by the standards of 1976, which is when studied this kind of thing in college. 2. I would not be surprised if Watson came with: The benefits of all known treatments are negligible. [CITE NCHS] (only in more detail). The thing is, Watson would feel no contraction between this response and the one he gave a minute before. He would not recognize that if the second response is true, it invalidates the first one. That is too high a level of abstraction for Watson, and for many people. You can think of Watson as resembling an incompetent mid-level officer in a hopeless war. The other day I read about a colonel in Afghanistan who was asked something like, what do you see as the long term goal of this war? His answers would befit a sergeant, but no one higher up. He kept talking about specifics such as building an airfield, or securing this many villages or educating that many replacement troops. He had no big picture notion of what to do or how to win. He saw only specifics and short-term, concrete goals. There were many Japanese officers like that in WWII. They knew how to win locally, and they were efficient at doing their jobs, but they did not have a clue how to win the war because, obviously, there was no way for them to win. They didn't want to think about it. Watson would be incapable of thinking about it. He can only focus on the level of the question he is asked to look into. I do not think he is capable of treating it as a meta-question about larger issues. Imagine you ask a Japanese officer for a plan of attack tomorrow. It would never occur to him to say: Let's not attack, because even if we win the Americans will only send in more troops and beat us next time. Let's do nothing and let these fine young men of ours go home alive after the war. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Suppose Watson tells people cancer treatment does not work?
On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 6:21 PM, Mark Gibbs mgi...@gibbs.com wrote: On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 3:14 PM, Jones Beene jone...@pacbell.net wrote: What if the entire corpus of physics is loaded, and Watson concludes that LENR is the superior energy solution for the future of humanity, far more so than hot fusion or fission ? What if Watson concludes LENR is a load of baloney? [mg] Watson will blow a fuse while it is processing Rossi's statements. harry
Re: [Vo]:Suppose Watson tells people cancer treatment does not work?
I wrote: The thing is, Watson would feel no contraction between this response and the one he gave a minute before. He would not recognize that if the second response is true, it invalidates the first one. That is too high a level of abstraction for Watson, and for many people. As far as I know, Watson wouldn't. That is my impression reading about Watson. I could be wrong. I have just been reading generalized descriptions of Watson, and I read about previous language parsing and internal representation. As I said, computers may eventually be able to do this. When I say Watson understands in this context I do not mean he understands the way humans do. It is a different thing. Far more limited. The mechanism is different. The mechanics are different, which is like saying that an airplane flies even though it does not flap its wings. In my opinion it is reasonable to say that a bee can think and communicate by dancing. Brain tissue is brain tissue, and the information definitely does pass from one bee to another. The thinking is rudimentary and bound entirely by instinct, and the communication is totally different from human language, yet they fall into the same general category as human cogitation and language. If you agree that a bee can think, it is reasonable to say that Watson can understand human language. Actually, it is more accurate to say the entire bee hive thinks as one entity, and plans its future. The notion of an entire group of animals thinking as if they were one organism is alien to us. If something that alien can be said to think it is not such a stretch to imagine a massively parallel processor computer like Watson thinking. Watson's biggest weakness compared to people is its inability to grasp (parse; guess; model) context in any depth. I doubt that computers will think using the kinds of mechanisms human brain tissue does, although there used to be some interesting programs that simulated neurons and synapses. I do not think Watson is anything like that. - Jed
Re: [Vo]:Suppose Watson tells people cancer treatment does not work?
On Thu, Jan 17, 2013 at 6:21 PM, Mark Gibbs mgi...@gibbs.com wrote: What if Watson concludes LENR is a load of baloney? I would enjoy a nice baloney sandwich.
