AI that can shoot down fighter planes helps treat bipolar disorder: Engineering and medical researchers apply genetic fuzzy logic successfully to predict treatment outcomes for bipolar patients

The findings open a world of possibility for using AI, or machine learning, to treat disease, researchers said. David Fleck, an associate professor at the UC College of Medicine, and his co-authors used artificial intelligence called "genetic fuzzy trees" to predict how bipolar patients would respond to lithium. Bipolar disorder, depicted in the TV show "Homeland" and the Oscar-winning "Silver Linings Playbook," affects as many as six million adults in the United States or 4 percent of the adult population in a given year. "In psychiatry, treatment of bipolar disorder is as much an art as a science," Fleck said. "Patients are fluctuating between periods of mania and depression. Treatments will change during those periods. It's really difficult to treat them appropriately during stages of the illness."