AI In Medicine: Rise Of The Machines

If you asked me 10 years ago, I would have said, "No way!" But if you ask me today, my answer would be more hesitant, "Not yet -- but perhaps someday soon." In particular, new "deep learning" artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms are showing promise in performing medical work which until recently was thought only capable of being done by human physicians. For example, deep learning algorithms have been able to diagnose the presence or absence of tuberculosis (TB) in chest x-ray images with astonishing accuracy. Researchers first "trained" the AIs with hundreds of x-ray images of patients without and with tuberculosis. Then, they tested the AIs with 150 new x-rays.