An AI Built to Tell Apart Pastries Was Great at Spotting Cancers

An artificial intelligence system that was originally designed to distinguish between different types of pastry in Japan in 2013 was adapted to identify cancers, The New Yorker reports. The system, called "BakeryScan," was first launched back in 2013 by Hisashi Kambe, a computer systems engineer. The system, which is still around and can be bought for roughly $20,000, gives local bakeries a hand by doing basic tasks like distinguishing croissants from bear claws. It can cut down on employee training and make the checkout process more hygienic, according to the company. But several years later, a doctor from the Louis Pasteur Center for Medical Research in Kyoto realized that the clever tool could be used for a very different purpose as well: recognizing cancerous cells in microscope slides.