7 ms·
It also takes a while for Watson to do the “machine learning” necessary to become a reliable assistant in an area. This could make a great pay-per-package prod
by kevinalexbrown 14y ago
It also takes a while for Watson to do the “machine learning” necessary to become a reliable assistant in an area.
This could make a great pay-per-package product. Matlab and Mathematica do this, for instance, by making easy-to-use statistical or signal processing packages by subfield.
To expand on the example in the article, taking this into an easier to use interface for people like medical professionals would be awesome. A friend of mine who worked in an ER told me Wikipedia is actually used quite frequently. A program that could intelligently parse medical documents could be a great next step. It doesn't need to make actual diagnoses, but to jog the memory, an intelligent "these symptoms are consistent with pneumonia, bronchitis, or whooping cough" would probably be well-used.
Or for double-checking contraindications at pharmacies. Or for advising lawyers about applicable case-law. Or for reminding me about relevant studies as I do literature searches. Cool.
Edit: I imagine this will draw some comparisons to Siri, or its factual backend, wolfram Alpha. While wolfram Alpha is pretty sweet, I imagine context-specific question-parsing and machine learning would be much more powerful here (although I suppose wolfram Alpha/Mathematica could get into that game, too).
- CodeCube 14y ago"A friend of mine who worked in an ER told me Wikipedia is actually used quite frequently" God help us, God help us all
- shardling 14y agoYes, surely a random internet commenter is in a better position to understand what is useful than someone who actually works in ER.
- CodeCube 14y agoIt wasn't a comment on the ER doctor's ability to extract value out of wikipedia. It was a comment on the fact that Wikipedia is the wild west. Far as I can tell, most erroneous edits on popular subjects are quickly caught. But I wonder how vigilant those wikipedia editors are on obscure medical topics that require an expensive medical education to truly understand. I'd feel better about it if Wikipedia was innovating above and beyond the implementation of a wiki ... even if the solution is still crowdsourced. For example I would love to see the application of machine learning to the process of moderation, not unlike what Stackexchange is working on these days (http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-machine-learning-contest/ http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-machine...). Circling back to the topic at hand, I would actually love it if "Watson" eventually has all of the data currently available in wikipedia. But with each fact cross-checked for validity against everything else he already knows.
- justincormack 14y agoYou mean like Cyc? Its not an easy project as facts are not as tidy as you might hope http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc
- batgaijin 14y agoNote to self: never edit a medical article drunk again.
- datapolitical 14y agoYou're fine as long as you stick to medical research articles.
- ZoFreX 14y agoMy doctor actually Googled my symptoms while I was in the office. It's not actually a bad approach, as he put it any article ranking highly for all of the symptoms and no or few other ones is likely to be relevant.
- cygwin98 14y agoWow, reading this makes me wonder if a great deal of family doctors can be replaced by an expert system that can be assisted by a remote doctor in a centralized way. I call it 'Doctor in demand'
- ZoFreX 14y agoNext time you see your GP ask what their typical workload involves. I doubt the remote doctor would even be needed in 90% of cases!
- busyant 14y agoThat's a cheap shot. The medical and science articles in wikipedia that I've read in areas where I have expertise are remarkably good. Why not use a powerful, free and fast resource, as long as you're cognizant of its limitations?