Ethics of Medical AI: The Case of Watson for Oncology

Abstract

Let’s be honest: one of the big motivators for studying medicine is its job prospects: namely plenty of well-paid safe jobs. That is why medical artificial intelligence (medical AI) should scare you: because it is coming after your jobs.
In this chapter we will discuss IBM Watson for Oncology (from now on just Watson for short) as a case study in the emergence of medical AI. We will analyse the most interesting ethical and philosophical questions raised by medical AI in general and Watson in particular.
Watson is “a decision-support system that ranks cancer therapeutic options” based on machine learning algorithms, which are computer systems that are, according to cognitive scientists, able to “figure it out on their own, by making inferences from data”.
So you can double down on your fear already, dear medics: those machines are coming after your jobs and they are also coming after the jobs of their own programmers – that’s how greedy they are. They clearly won’t stop until they have taken over the whole world, which is in fact what technophobes and their extremist friends, the techno-apocalypsts, are afraid of.
How does Watson work? Based primarily on its access to up-to-date medical research publications and patient’s health records, Watson’s algorithm – developed by IBM engineers together with oncologists from the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York - generates cancer treatment recommendations that oncologists can review and use in consultation with patients.

Keywords: Medical AI; Watson for Oncology; Bioethics