Silicon Valley is trumpeting AI as the cure for the medical industry, but doctors are skeptical

Despite his aversion to jargon, Weiss was among the most optimistic of the group. In recent weeks, he's closely followed the developments of UK-based Alphabet company DeepMind, which taught computers to master an ancient game called Go. For Weiss, what mattered is how the computer "changed the way the game gets made" after thousands of years of humans playing it. He hopes that Google might somehow figure out ways to crack complex problems like obesity by understanding the biological factors that drive people to gain weight or put weight back on. The hope, he said, "is to be unbiased and let the data tell us how to do things."