Even in the small provincial village of Quiberon in Brittany in France in the bookstore one could find copies of the book by the Israeli historian of the future, Yuval Noah Harari. When you read his books you will have some inkling of the enormous role the Artificial Intelligence would play in the future and many of his fellow Israelis who are scientists are in the forefront of Artificial Intelligence.
Even in simple things such as Cardiograph or Chest x ray interpretations, AI always comes out ahead.
As a Medical Anthropologist I see the role of DISEASE or Ill HEALTH in context of society and the Individuals body much bigger than the just the physical but also the social and political bodies.
The technical aspects of medical care, A I would have a great role to play and as you may have observed, western medicine is becoming more and more technical (Renal Dialysis for example). AI is much more than the Laboratory aspects of medicine but it can invent (such as the invention of the first antibiotic in 35 years).
We are surrounded by big tech companies who make no profit..twitter or whatsapp being two good example. But why are they in business? They are in the business of DATA.. Data now may be worth more than money, as the fossil fuels recede into obscurity, Israel a small country with no natural resources but fantastic human resources may become one of the richest countries in the world.
In the near future, when you enter the doctor's office, there may be no humans present but a contraption such as the one you see at TSA screenings at airports and within a matter of minute or so, it will spew out an enormous amount of data about you: the physical aspect, then the chemical aspect and perhaps even the mental aspect. Google and Amazon now influence our minds to select goods and choices so in the future our choices on who to love and who to marry may be selected for us by AI.
Let us not look at AI as an enemy but welcome AI as a friend and collaborator. In the hands of South Korea, atomic energy is for the welfare of the country and comfort of the citizens but in the hands of North Korea , it propels rockets into the air .
On this visit to this side of Atlantic, i had the pleasure of the company of many adolescent female children , from ages 8-15 and I was aghast at their capacity to think, the depth of their knowledge and their innovative thinking. They made me realize how quickly you can make yourself obsolete and old fashioned, knowledge wise. 3 were from Israel 1 from France, 2 from Spain.
Just an example, from Israel, from a 8 year old.
: During R's (3rd grade now age 8) zoom class the teacher asked them to pick a question, such as what made you sad or happy the last few days, or what interesting question you thought of....
: R's response "I amvery interested to know why people exist!! not how they were created....I know that..but rather why we are here at all. The teacher (stunned) asked "what do you think is the answer?"
The eight year old Israeli girl said , "I think people were created to investigate, research, and ASK QUESTIONS, and then try to answer them".
Google Go Master Computer defeating the World Champion Go Master.
After this trip, I feel a bit like Rip van Wrinkle waking up.. the world of intelligence is changing so fast, and it might be a good idea to keep abreast of what is happening. Otherwise you might soon become an illiterate.
Here, from The Economist magazine , a tribute to the Israeli scientist Regina Barzilay who teaches at MIT in USA.
When a new book on artificial intelligence—co-written by Henry Kissinger—hit the shelves in November, one of its main examples was research from 2020 that used AI to discover a new antibiotic. It works better than existing drugs because it attacks the bacteria in a novel way, to which they have not built up resistance. Behind the life-saving algorithm are Regina Barzilay, a computer scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a team of researchers. It is just one of several areas where she uses AI to improve medicine.
Born in Moldova, Dr Barzilay was educated in Israel and America and began her academic life in computational linguistics. She developed algorithms to classify news stories by theme and to summarise them. But in 2014, in her mid-40s, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. After undergoing chemotherapy and lumpectomies at Massachusetts General Hospital, she was aware that just nearby, in her academic department, technology existed that could have helped her and could save the lives of millions of women around the world. From that moment, she changed her research to focus on AI in health care. A MacArthur “genius” grant followed in 2017.
Her work has made contributions to the field beyond antibiotics. In recent months Dr Barzilay, along with Adam Yala, a doctoral student at MIT, has been working to introduce an AI system called Mirai, which can predict whether a patient is at risk of breast cancer within as much as five years. Having scanned thousands of mammograms, the AI is able to uncover subtle, intricate patterns that elude human eyes and cognition. “If this technology is used in a uniform way,” she says, “we can identify early who are high-risk patients and intervene. The earlier the cancer is detected, the easier it is to treat it and the outcomes are much better,” she says.
The system she built might have benefited her: after her first mammogram she was informed that she was healthy. Three years later she was diagnosed with cancer. When she fed that early mammogram into Mirai, the AI indicated she had been at high risk. Too late to warn her, but Mirai may alert many others.
