Google's artificial intelligence can diagnose cancer faster than human doctors

Making the decision on whether or not a patient has cancer usually involves trained professionals meticulously scanning tissue samples over weeks and months. But Google's artificial intelligence (AI) supercomputer DeepMind may be able to do it much, much faster. The search company has been working with the NHS since September last year to help speed up cancer detection. The software can now tell the difference between healthy and cancerous tissue, as well as discover if metastasis has occured. "Metastasis detection is currently performed by pathologists reviewing large expanses of biological tissues. This process is labour intensive and error-prone," explained Google in a white paper outlining the study.