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Sunday, November 24, 2013

Artificial Intelligence: Doctors of the Future

Consider the game of Chess. A simple game in looks but has depths of complications that separate the masters from the experts. One of the key components of Chess is the ability to think ahead of your opponent. It sounds easy enough to think two or three turns ahead, but how about ten? Twenty? A computer makes a good Chess player because of the ability to hold and remember large amounts of data, enabling a computer to think ahead numerous amounts of steps.

What "Robot" Chess might look like.


That way of thinking has been expanded to artificial intelligence's in the medical field. Indiana University has created a computer doctor that analyses patient and medical data and attempts to diagnose the patient. According to their study, the computer had a 30 – 35% higher success rate than human doctors in finding the correct diagnoses. There is also the benefit of having a 50% reduction in medical costs. A cheaper and more successful diagnosis seems very appealing, but why does it work so well?


The computer can create very educated guesses because of it can retain tons of medical data, much more than a human doctor can ever hope to remember. The computer also has no bias at all. What I mean is a doctor will look for signs that point to their specialty, a robot doctor will have no such bias and therefor look at all kinds of ailments not specific ones. I don’t know about everyone else, but I would like to be diagnosed by a robot in the future.

2 comments:

  1. Your post was interesting in the sense that you have a simple hook but yet it leads to a very important notion of our future. Ending your post with such a thought-provoking question is a great way to make your post memorable but also to make your readers think for themselves. My answer would depend on how advanced artificial intelligence had become in the field of medicine. If anything I would prefer my diagnosis to come from a collaboration of a doctor and a robot.

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  2. Hi Matthew, your post is really interesting to read. Computer doctors would be a good idea in the future if they are tested and programmed extremely well. Remember, software products can always have bugs, and it might take a lot of time to figure out how to fix the bugs. However, I totally agree with you that computer doctors are precise, unbiased and unaffected by any environment factor comparing to human doctors. Anyways, you have done a great job. Keep it up.

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