The Best AI Still Flunks 8th Grade Science

In 2012, IBM Watson went to medical school. So said The New York Times, announcing that the tech giant's artificially intelligent question-and-answer machine had begun a "stint as a medical student" at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine. This was just a metaphor. Clinicians were helping IBM train Watson for use in medical research. But as metaphors go, it wasn't a very good one.