Artificial Intelligence is continuing to get better and better, whether we’re comfortable with how quickly it appears to be evolving. While there’s an idea that AI will never be able to replace certain types of jobs, such as specialized medical professionals, it appears that this might indeed be the case in the future. A new story came out that shows that Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) AI system is able to outperform medical doctors in detecting breast cancer in patients, finding less false negatives as well as false positives.
According to The Financial Times, Google is developing a new system that’s able to detect breast cancer more effectively than doctors can. Specifically, a paper published recently has shown that Google’s DeepMind unit and its new AI model is able to lower the number of false positives and false negatives – situations where patients are wrongly told that they have or don’t have cancer – then doctors that just rely on their own judgment.
For those not aware of the specifics of modern medical technology, screening mammograms aren’t a perfect way to detect breast cancer, with the method failing to detect cancer in one in five women. At the same time, there are tons of women who receive false positives due to errors in the mammogram, which ends up wasting patient’s time, causing them excess stress, and wasting medical resources.
“There will of course be a number of challenges to address before AI could be implemented in mammography screening programmes around the world, but the potential for improving healthcare and helping patients is enormous,” said Professor Ara Drazi, who authored the paper which was published from Google in partnership with medical universities across the U.S. and U.K.
While the results are largely impressive, showing a 5.7% reduction in the number of false positives as well as a 9.4% reduction in the number of false negatives, there’s still a bit more tweaking and development needed before it can become an aid for diagnostic personal. Google has already made significant inroads in the medical analyst’s world, having previously created a program called Lymph Node assistant. This program is 99% accurate in identifying late-stage breast cancer cells in patients that have spread throughout the body, an impressive achievement. Google is already planning a commercial launch for a device that can also diagnose eye conditions to a similar degree of accuracy as eye doctors can.
Google Company Profile
Alphabet is a holding company, with Google, the Internet media giant, as a wholly owned subsidiary. Google generates 99% of Alphabet revenue, of which more than 85% is from online ads. Google’s other revenue is from sales of apps and content on Google Play and YouTube, as well as cloud service fees and other licensing revenue. Sales of hardware such as Chromebooks, the Pixel smartphone, and smart homes products, which include Nest and Google Home, also contribute to other revenue. Alphabet’s moonshot investments are in its other bets segment, where it bets on technology to enhance health (Verily), faster Internet access to homes (Google Fiber), self-driving cars (Waymo), and more. Alphabet’s operating margin has been 25%-30%, with Google at 30% and other bets operating at a loss. – Warrior Trading News
