Microsoft announces new AI-powered health care initiatives targeting cancer

Microsoft has announced a quartet of new initiatives focusing on using artificial intelligence in health care. The company says its researchers are effectively working to "solve" cancer, deploying machine learning techniques for tasks like analyzing tumors and designing new medication regimes. Another projects wants to construct detailed simulations of how cancer develops in different patients' bodies, while one particularly ambitious project -- which Microsoft is calling its "moonshot" effort -- aims to create biological cells that are programmable like computers. Now, creating cells designed to fight cancer is obviously an ambitious task (if it's even possible) and Microsoft is not offering much detail about this particular project. However, personalizing medicine using AI is a much more attainable -- and hopefully effective -- goal.