AI is now as Smart as 90% of Human Doctors
Artificial intelligence (AI) is now as good at diagnosing disease as roughly 90% of human doctors, studies show.
In fact, AI is slightly better at disease detection than most human doctors, an analysis of 14 research papers found. Specifically AI correctly diagnosed diseases 87% of the time while human doctors got the diagnosis right 86% of the time, the analysis estimates.
Moreover, AI correctly pronounced patients disease free 93% of time while human physicians accurately diagnosed patients disease free 91% of the time, The Guardian claims. Thus the analysis claims AI is better at diagnosing disease than humans.
Experts find AI is better at Diagnosing Disease than Human Doctors
To clarify several researchers compared the diagnostic accuracy of humans and AI in several data bases. The researchers published the results in the British journal The Lancet Digital Health.
“Our review found the diagnostic performance of deep learning models to be equivalent to that of health-care professionals,” an introduction states. They published the analysis as “A comparison of deep learning performance against health-care professionals in detecting diseases from medical imaging: a systematic review and meta-analysis.”
Deep learning models use several layers of algorithms to sift through vast amounts of data to find results. In diagnosis, a deep learning model sifts through all the data about a patient and a disease to find a diagnosis.
Will AI and Deep Learning put human professionals out of work?
Thus, AI can now diagnose ailments better than most human doctors. Thus, AI could put around 87% of human diagnosticians out of work.
Lawyers; for instance, are even more vulnerable to AI than doctors, a 2018 study suggests. The study pitted 20 top American attorneys against the LawGeex AI, Hackernoon’s Jonathan Marciano writes.
When analyzing non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) for flaws, LawGeex had a 94% accuracy rate, Marciano claims. However, the average attorney had an 84% accuracy rate at the same activity.
Therefore, LawGeex is 10% more accurate than a human lawyer. Moreover, it took LawGeex just 26 second to analyze an ADA and 92 minutes for the average lawyer to analyze an NDA. Under those circumstances, a CEO whose business uses lots of NDAs could ask, “why should I pay high fees to human attorneys when I can just buy LawGeex?”
Hence AI could totally destabilize society because we could soon have tens of thousands of unemployed and highly educated professionals out of work. Moreover, many of those professionals will have student loans and mortgages to pay off and no job.
That sounds like a recipe for revolution me. Historically, disgruntled middle-class professionals often led revolutions. Lenin, Jefferson, and Robespierre were lawyers, for instance.
Are Nurses the Future of Medicine?
Strangely, AI’s diagnostic capabilities could be good news for patients and bad news for doctors.
Author, scientist, and venture capitalist Kai-Fu Lee predicts that a class of new medical professionals will arise because of AI. Lee calls these professionals compassionate caregivers in his book AI Super-Powers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order.
The good news for patients is that compassionate caregivers are likely to be cheaper, kinder, friendlier, more sensitive, and more responsive than human doctors. For instance, anybody with some basic medical training could be a compassionate caregiver. The caregiver will turn to the AI for diagnosis each time she sees a patient.
Compassionate caregivers are nothing new. There is an old English word that best describes their role it is “nurse.” Hence the future of medicine could be nurse practitioners, nurses, and paramedics using AI to diagnose patients.
Therefore, AI could create lots of jobs for intelligent and compassionate young women while putting older male doctors out of work. That sounds like a prescription for social upheaval to me. In particular, I do not think older male doctors will give up their Mercedes and country club memberships without a bloody fight.
Boston Dynamics Walking Robots are for Sale
All the people paranoid about robots and AI have a new reason to be afraid. Boston Dynamics appears almost ready to sell its scary Spot walking robots.
A Boston Dynamics web page advertising the dog-like Spot robot contains a “contact sales” button. The page provides no price for Spot but it lists the robot’s specs and capability.
Spot can walk at three miles per hour and operate for 90 minutes on a swappable battery. Impressively Spot features two stereo cameras that give it 360 vision and the ability to navigate around obstacles, Boston Dynamics claims. Plus they build Spot to withstood dusty and wet industrial environments and rain.
Spot can carry payloads of 14 kilograms. Furthermore, you can customize Spot with your own software and accessories. Thus, it is theoretically possible to arm Spot with a gun. Plus, it could be possible to equip Spot with tools like saws, drills, hoses, sprayers, and even vacuum cleaners.
Boston Dynamics is planning future accessories for Spot. Possible Spot accessories include a large video camera for optical inspection and a mechanical arm that can lift objects.
There is no word on when Spot will ship to customers. However, you can download Spot’s software development kit from Boston Dynamics right now. Thus, you can create new uses for Spot.
