Will IBM's Watson Kill Your Career?

Nerval's Lobster writes "IBM's Watson made major headlines last year when it trounced its human rivals on Jeopardy. But Watson isn't just sitting around spinning trivia questions to stump the champs: IBM is working hard on taking it into a series of vertical markets such as healthcare, contact management and financial services to see if the system can be used for diagnosing diseases and catching market trends. Does this spell the end for certain careers? Not really, but it does raise some interesting thoughts and issues."

Comments

Watson is a better button pusher

[ShanghaiBill]

The only reason Watson "trounced" its rivals was because it was faster at pushing the button.

It was unable to answer questions that required any thought or insight. It was just looking up the answers in a database based on patterns in the questions. The only reason it won was because of better reaction time in pushing the button. If the questions were asked in a fair round-robin to all contestants, Watson would not have won.

Buggy Whips and Their Makers

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we're all familiar with the buggy whip problem, but what I sometimes wonder is what happens to folks when, instead of moving on to some next technological replacement, the problem is that most of the jobs that require doing have just been taken by machines?

I like to think that means we have resources and end product at prices so low that everything works out in the wash, and more lives will be spent in a trek -style quest for self betterment or research or whatever. But it seems like you've got to survive a middle-era where there's just nothing much for you to do, but resources are still all privately allocated.

Eh. I guess we'll see.

Machines should think, people should work

[Animats]

Today, it's "machines should think, people should work". Consider supermarket checkout. All the smart stuff is being done by the checkout system. The "cashier" just moves items across the scanner. The last production systems recognize products visually, and automatic recognition of fruits and vegetables is in beta test.

For a more extreme example, see this video on robotic order fulfillment. This is a demonstration of how new order pickers can be trained in two minutes. The computers and robots do all the thinking. There's no future. No possibility of promotion. No hope.

Re:Machines should think, people should work

[Anonymous Coward]

Consider supermarket checkout. All the smart stuff is being done by the checkout system. The "cashier" just moves items across the scanner.

I think you've inadvertently provided an example that refutes your idea. Checkout machines perform the bulk of the work, freeing the human (cashier) to perform the few remaining thinking tasks. I doubt anyone would qualify scanning barcodes and matching to a price list as "smart stuff", so the machines are indeed handling the work. While the cashier does usually perform one obviously menial task, the cashier still performs the only tasks there that requires actual thought. The cashier serves as store representative to the customer (When I cashiered at a large chain, I was told that for 90% of customers, the cashier was the only store employee with whom they interacted). Thus the cashier addresses unpredicted problems (either with the machine, or with the customer), and also serves as the store's best tool to prevent accidental or intended theft. The cashier both visually confirms that every item is scanned, and the cashier observes customer behavior and also simply provides a real human interaction, which reduces shoplifting. This is why there is still one cashier stationed to supervise multiple "self-checkout" stations at stores. While their task is not rocket science, it is impossible to comprehensively program.
You could reasonably argue that, when the machine handles all the tasks it can, the cashier can better perform the real thinking task, like observing the environment and human behavior. Thus, the supermarket checkout actually is an example of the IBM Polyanna principle.
Of course, when the environment is completely controlled, such as for an order picker, there is no thinking task to perform, so a machine can do all that work. The jobs which require thinking can change over time, but there will never be a world in which thinking humans are useless.

Not watson... but

[Anonymous Coward]

Over the next two decades we're going to see computers and automated systems start replacing white collar jobs more and more. Its already happening in the financial markets.

And all those white collar managers who thought it was fine and dandy that their blue collar workers got replaced by robots and automation are going to throw a world class temper tantrum. And some sort of laws and regulations will get passed to protect many jobs.

Wait and see.

Call it a prediction. (dead obvious prediction... but isnt that how the psychics do it?)

Re:it will make the same mistakes as humans

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not clear at all. What does Watson produce? Probabilities of correct answers. So, Watson would have said that there is a 82% probability of virus, 17% probability of pneumonia, and 1% that it is something else. Given that, it can / should / will be able to look at it's own logic and determine the correct test that would differentiate between a virus and pneumonia. Given the results of that test, it can then determine that there is a 96% probability of pneumonia, 3% virus, and 1% other. If some of the 'other' have high mortality, or the tests are easy, then it can run tests for those as well.

Watson doesn't have an ego. It doesn't have a vested interest in seeing that it was correct (confirmation bias). It can actually accurately estimate it's own level of knowledge.

Yes, Watson will sometimes be wrong. It could very well be one of those 1% with horrible results for the people involved. But, it will produce fewer human errors.

The big problem of course is when the tests are not cheap or easy. Then the insurance company can say no to the test, and that 82% is good enough. Also, you have to take into consideration that chest x-rays are not risk free either. At what point does a test potentially cause more harm than the low-probability disease that it might cure.