The government needs to work faster to regulate AI, which has more potential for the good of humanity than any other invention preceding it. In an interview with a US news channel program on Sunday, this was the opinion of Brad Smith, president, and vice chair of Microsoft. Smith illustrated his point by citing two specific examples in medicine and diagnosing diseases.
In the case of cancer, he said that researchers had trained an AI algorithm to detect the presence of tumors in radiology scans by analyzing thousands of images of patients with various conditions. It could identify the tumors with 92% accuracy, comparable to a human pathologist’s. The results can help doctors plan treatments or make more informed decisions about the best way to proceed with surgery.
Another example he gave was of using AI to screen blood samples for a rare disease such as sickle cell anemia. The technology could spot the disease early and allow treatment to begin before symptoms appear. The algorithm also can spot other signs of the disease in the sample, such as a high number of white cells. These can be a sign of inflammation associated with the condition. Unfortunately, this can also lead to a higher risk of infection, according to Smith.
AI is already widely used to perform repetitive tasks, freeing up workers to do more critical jobs. This includes recognizing faces in photos, transcribing phone calls, and answering simple customer questions such as “What time do you close?” AI is also used to help find and deliver the best possible healthcare to patients by automating processes that would otherwise be too labor-intensive to carry out manually.
One area in which AI is expected to have a significant impact in drug discovery, where it can improve the efficiency of drug development and help reduce costs by making the process more accurate and targeted. It can identify more promising molecules and eliminate the need for screening tens of thousands of compounds. It can also detect patterns that may be linked to a disease or the response to certain drugs, and it can help speed up the process by identifying the best drug combinations.
This approach is becoming increasingly popular, with new AI labs opening up worldwide. For example, Exscientia opened a research center in Vienna last year, and Insilico Medicine is building a new lab in Abu Dhabi. The labs are experimenting with new approaches to AI in health care, such as analyzing voices for biomarkers that can be linked to disease.
In the US, a recent Pew Research Center survey found that Americans aware of AI being used to diagnose skin cancer would want it to be available for their diagnosis. However, a large share of those who see a problem with bias based on race and ethnicity in health care think that the use of AI would make it worse rather than better.
