AI and Deep Learning Algorithms Catching up to Humans in Medicine
I know I keep coming back to the topic of AI in this blog. It seems to be increasingly more and more relevant. We Machines will do our jobs for us, machines will replace us. They might even turn on us. We hear it all the time. Sometimes we watch movies or read books (yes, some of us still read) portraying a kind of dystopian society, where robots turn on their human creators, and we get quite some entertainment out of it.
While it doesn’t seem likely that future artificial intelligence machines may turn on us, the general consensus is that they for sure WILL replace us, maybe even as soon as in the next 50 years. Machines may become better than us in absolutely everything that we can do. That is to say that humans may not be able to do anything that a machine cannot do better, perhaps much better. This is becoming increasingly clear in the field of medicine. However, when we step out of the movie theater, back to reality, and consider those propositions, we’re dismissive or incredulous. The purpose of this article will be to give you just a few facts to push back on those assumptions. Here is some of the progress that AI and deep learning machines have made so far:
- IBM’s Watson AI can diagnose just as good as any radiologist, and some say even faster and with more accuracy.
- AI tools, when applied to cardiology, can find “skin cancers, blood clots, and infections all with unprecedented speed and accuracy,” according to Huffington Post.
- Forbes writes that “deep learning algorithms have been able to diagnose the presence or absence of tuberculosis (TB) in chest x-ray images with astonishing accuracy…better than most radiologists.”
- From diabetes, to breast cancer, to predicting heart attacks, AI is already beating humans.
As we move into a world where machine intelligence is reaching new heights, we may have to consider the idea that one day a robot might be performing surgery instead of a human being. Machines may be so much better that one day, it might be ILLEGAL for a human to perform surgery. What do you think will happen in the future? Leave your comments below!