Retour

AI said it would help cure cancer.

Instead, it gave dangerous advice... The Watson Failure.

AI said it would help cure cancer.

The Watson Failure

IBM Watson for Oncology was pitched as revolutionary. AI that helps doctors pick the right cancer treatment, but it never lived up to the promise.

Why?

Because it wasn’t trained on real patients. It learned from synthetic, clean, hypothetical data. And when real-life complexity hit, it broke. Doctors lost trust & hospitals pulled the plug. AI in healthcare lost credibility.

Here’s what an audit would’ve flagged before launch:

Bad positioning

It tried to guide doctors without understanding their context.

Fix: Define scope. AI should support, not simulate expertise.

No real workflow testing

It wasn’t built with clinicians, just for them.

Fix: Involve experts. Design around real decision paths.

Poor data integrity

No messy, diverse, real-world inputs = hallucinated outputs.

Fix: Use anonymized patient data, validated in cycles.

Weak architecture

Watson couldn’t handle uncertainty.

Fix: Model ambiguity. Build fallback paths. Plan for failure.

Missing governance

In healthcare, AI mistakes can be fatal.

Fix: Embed ethics. Make safety the default.

Sensai’s Point:

Whether you’re in finance, HR, or law… if your AI gives advice without grounding in reality, you’re not scaling intelligence, you’re scaling liability.

Your AI is only as good as your audit. Audit first. Deploy second.

SensAI, Agentic AI dojo.