IBM Watson for Oncology Criticized by Customers for Allegedly Unsafe and Inaccurate Cancer Treatment Recommendations

April 7, 2017

Reports from internal IBM Watson Health documents reveal criticisms by clients such as Florida's Jupiter Hospital and Memorial Sloan Kettering about the safety and accuracy of their Watson for Oncology product. Such incidents underscore the need for trustworthy AI, particularly in the medical field. Harm prevention requires rigorous governance, especially when it comes to life-altering diagnoses and treatments. For those interested in shaping the future of safe and secure AI practices, consider joining HISPI Project Cerebellum TAIM (Measure) to help map and measure incidents like this, contributing to a more responsible AI ecosystem.

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Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MEASURE 2.6 — similarity 0.713, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 1.3 — similarity 0.665, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 3.1 — similarity 0.664, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: jupiter-hospital, memorial-sloan-kettering
Alleged developer: ibm-watson-health
Alleged harmed parties: oncologists, cancer-patients

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/225

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.