The advent of a new generation of AI systems has prompted wide-ranging conversation about the future of jobs across industries. Goldman Sachs economists estimate that 300 million jobs around the world could be at least partially automated, and up to a quarter of global jobs could be completely automated. Yet the technology is not likely to affect all jobs equally, nor is it ready to be fully deployed in some industries. Regina Barzilay, MIT professor and AI lead of MIT Jameel Clinic for Machine Learning and Health discusses AI's existing and potential applications in the medical field.
"Smart AI algorithms, which are trained on large-scale medical data and equipped with powerful computing, can go beyond what is humanly possible, eliminate care delays and reduce the cost of health care. We already see research models that can diagnose diseases years prior to symptom occurrence, predict an individual patient’s response to intervention and personalise the treatment," says Regina.
"Based on my experience collaborating with hospitals, health care systems are more likely to utilise AI to reduce the administrative burden in care management, fueled by advancements in natural language processing tools," Regina explains.
"But the more fundamental change to health care will come from the uptake of new AI-powered diagnostic and treatment tools which will shift late-disease treatment to prevention and early-stage interventions. In the same way that e-commerce provides recommendations tailored to a consumer, AI-empowered medicine will eventually be personalised."
"To achieve this vision, advancements in AI are not sufficient on their own; clinicians, regulators and the general public have a role to play in determining the extent to which AI will be adopted in hospitals and doctors’ offices."