Imagine if a few hundred microbots were to be introduced into your bloodstream -- their task being the continuous monitoring of your vital signs, or diseases, like a hairline fracture, a clot in an artery or even cancer cells. They will analyze and remove these problems on the go and signal you when you need to take medication or require surgery. With such round-the-clock monitoring, the human body will hardly ever suffer from serious ailments. According to the historian-turned-philosopher, Yuval Noah Harari, with such technology humans can turn a-mortal, if not immortal. At the core of this scientific utopia will be AI technology of various kinds, like deep learning and neural networks.

Machine learning is an often-used term that has been promised to do everything from making workers more productive to taking over individuals' jobs entirely. Frankly, it will likely be many years before anyone should be concerned about being replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) at their job. However, doctors might find AI impinging upon their jobs sooner rather than later. The medical field has some characteristics that make it an attractive target for machine learning. The high stakes nature of correct disease diagnosis, coupled with over-worked and fatigued doctors, can lead to cases where patients with easily treatable diseases go undiagnosed and suffer greatly from this.

All of a sudden, everyone is talking about artificial intelligence. It appears as frequently in the news headlines as indefinite articles before nouns. Not to speak about all the other over-hyped buzzwords from the tech scene.