Cancer, the single most feared diagnosis imaginable, is being tackled by some of the biggest companies in the world using the most formidable weapon: à la artificial intelligence. In fact, the milestones we have hit in past two years in diagnosing rare forms of Cancer using clinical data, has stumped the scientific community.
At the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Medical Science, IBM’s Watson matched a patients’ symptoms against 20 million clinical oncology studied. With Watson’s Machine Learning capabilities and the readily available oncological data, scientists and clinicians could diagnose cancer in just about ten minutes. In the western world, Google and Amazon are helping scientists analyze genetic data. Both, Google genomics and Amazon Web Services, are offering analytical functions of the cloud to help scientists make sense of genomics data. A five-year-old company, Sophia Genetics, is sequencing the genomes of patient’s tissue samples to diagnose cancer. By applying AI, machine learning and big data into healthcare, we’re saving lives. We're reaching new medical breakthroughs and personalizing medicines tailored to meet our needs.
AI is fundamentally altering our lives. Forget Skynet, or the Matrix. These are all fictional depictions where AI lives in the gray zone. The reality, though, is less fantastical, because machine learning and artificial intelligence are doing what we as humans cannot. AI is saving lives.
So, the question is: should we be scared of AI or should we let AI makes lives better?
At Sophia Genetics, Jurgi Camblong is diagnosing cancer using thousands of people's DNA.
