AI Weekly: Watson Well being and semi-autonomous driving failures present the hazards of overpromising AI

This week in AI, actuality got here knocking — each for AI well being tech and semi-autonomous driving methods. IBM agreed to promote the property from its Watson Well being enterprise to funding agency Francisco Companions, following the division’s steeply declined efficiency. In the meantime, the Insurance coverage Institute for Freeway Security (IIHS), a nonprofit financed by the insurance coverage trade, introduced a brand new rankings program designed to guage how effectively “partial” automation methods like Tesla’s Autopilot present protections to stop misuse.

The dual developments are emblematic of the AI trade’s perennial downside: acknowledging AI’s limitations. Slate’s Jeffrey Funk and Gary Smith do a thorough job of recapping overly optimistic AI predictions in recent times, together with Ray Kurzweil’s pronouncement that computer systems could have “human-level” intelligence and “the flexibility to inform a joke, to be humorous, to be romantic, to be loving, to be horny” by 2029.

As any knowledgeable will verify, AI is nowhere near approaching human-level intelligence — emotional or in any other case. (Kurzweil’s new estimate is 2045.) Equally, autonomous vehicles and AI-driven well being care haven’t achieved the lofty heights futurists as soon as envisioned they’d attain. It’s an vital lesson in setting expectations — the long run isn’t simple to foretell, in any case — but additionally an instance of how the pursuit of revenue supercharges the hype cycle. Underneath strain to point out ROI, some well being tech and autonomous car firms have collapsed beneath the load of their overpromises, as this week’s information reveals.

Using excessive on the Watson win in opposition to Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings, IBM launched Watson Well being in 2015, positioning the suite of AI-powersed companies as the way forward for augmented care. The corporate’s gross sales pitch was that Watson Well being may analyze reams of medical knowledge — far sooner than any human physician may, ostensibly — to generate insights that enhance well being outcomes.

IBM reportedly spent $4 billion beefing up its Watson Well being division with acquisitions, however the expertise proved to be inefficient at finest — and dangerous at worst. A STAT report discovered that the platform usually gave poor and unsafe most cancers therapy recommendation as a result of Watson Well being’s fashions have been educated utilizing inaccurate, artificial medical information fairly than actual affected person knowledge.

Watson Well being’s demise might be partially attributed to IBM CEO Arvind Krishna’s shifting priorities, however rising cynicism about AI’s well being capabilities little doubt additionally performed a task. Research have proven that almost all eye illness datasets come from sufferers in North America, Europe, and China, that means eye disease-diagnosing algorithms are much less sure to work effectively for racial teams from underrepresented international locations. An audit of a UnitedHealth Group algorithm decided that it may underestimate by half the variety of Black sufferers in want of higher care. And a rising physique of labor means that pores and skin cancer-detecting algorithms are typically much less exact when used on Black sufferers, partially as a result of AI fashions are educated totally on pictures of light-skinned sufferers.

Semi-autonomous, AI-powered driving methods are coming beneath comparable scrutiny, significantly as automakers ramp up the rollout of merchandise they declare can practically drive a automotive themselves. In October 2021, Tesla was ordered to show over knowledge to the Nationwide Freeway Site visitors Security Administration as a part of an investigation into the corporate’s vehicles crashing into parked automobiles. The suspicion was that Tesla’s Autopilot was accountable — both partially or complete — for the harmful behaviors.

It’s not an unreasonable assumption. Late final yr, Tesla rolled out an replace to Autopilot with a bug that brought about the automated braking system in Teslas to have interaction for no obvious purpose. This brought about vehicles to quickly decelerate as they traveled down the freeway, placing them vulnerable to being rear-ended.

Tesla isn’t the one vendor that’s struggled to good semi-autonomous automotive expertise. A sobering 2020 research from the American Vehicle Affiliation discovered that the majority semi-autonomous methods in the marketplace — together with these from Kia and BMW — bumped into issues a median of each eight miles. For instance, when encountering a disabled car, the methods brought about a collision 66% of the time.

In 2016, GM was compelled to push again the rollout of its Tremendous Cruise function resulting from unspecified points. Ford not too long ago delayed its BlueCruise system in an effort to “simplify” the tech.

That brings us to this week’s information: the Insurance coverage Institute’s rankings program to guage semi-autonomous methods’ security protections. The group hopes it’ll encourage automakers to create higher designs as soon as the primary set of rankings, at present in growth, are issued this yr.

“The way in which many of those methods function offers folks the impression that they’re able to doing greater than they are surely,” Insurance coverage Institute analysis scientist Alexandra Mueller mentioned in a press release. “However even when drivers perceive the constraints of partial automation, their minds can nonetheless wander. As people, it’s tougher for us to stay vigilant after we’re watching and ready for an issue to happen than it’s after we’re doing all of the driving ourselves.”

That’s all to say that AI — whether or not self-driving or disease-diagnosing — is fallible, identical to the people who design it. Visions of a Jetsons future could be tantalizing, however when lives are at stake, historical past has proven that it’s finest to be overly cautions.

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Kyle Wiggers

Senior Employees Author