The report puts the blame on the IBM engineers and the Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center doctors who helped train the AI. They reportedly fed Watson hypothetical patients' data and treatment recommendations by MSK doctors instead of real patients' information. The approach apparently didn't work as well as they'd hoped, with one Florida Jupiter Hospital doctor telling IBM upon testing the system that the product is "a piece of shit." It's worth noting, however, that MSK believes the example involving the 65-year-old patient was merely part of a system testing and not an actual recommendation.

Despite that Jupiter doctor's less-than-stellar review, a spokesperson told Gizmodo that the hospital still uses Watson's recommendations. Its doctors don't completely rely on the plans it cooks up, though, and see them as an extra opinion when they can't agree on a treatment. As for IBM, it knows that Watson for Oncology still needs work and has taken feedback from clients into consideration to roll out multiple software updates with updated features over the past year.

The company told the publication: