Does AI detect breast cancer better than doctors can?
Study finds almost 18% higher breast cancer detection rate when doctors use artificial intelligence
TL;DR: yes
It's unfortunate that LLMs are the only thing that come to mind when AI is mentioned though. Something that can do pattern recognition better than a human can is good for this application
Even if it were to do pattern recognition as well as or slightly worse than a human, it's still worthwhile. As the article points out: It's basically a non-tiring, always-ready second opinion. That alone helps a lot.
One issue I could see is using it not as a second opinion, but the only opinion. That doesn't mean this shouldn't be pursued, but the incentives toward laziness and cost-cutting are obvious.
EDIT: One another potential issue is the AI detection being more accurate with certain groups (i.e. White Europeans), which could result in underdiagnosis in minority groups if the training data set doesn't include sufficient data for those groups. I'm not sure if that's likely with breast cancer detection, however.
I remember, when we were learning prolog, that in the 70s, or something like, that they were already experimenting with AI and it was quite good at diagnostics. However doctors were scared of losing jobs instead of embracing it and using it as a tool. So they dropped it at the time. Hopefully they will use it as an additional tool this time and everybody profits.
If you're going back that far, I remember hearing a story about the Australian military experimenting with immersive AI during a typical "give us money" event where a helicopter was flying over an area and the kangaroos scattered at the sound, disappearing over a hill...
Then reappeared with RPGs and fired them at the helicopter, taking it down. Lots of red faces and mumbling about working out some kinks. 😄
tl;dr: I'm old enough to remember when "AI" was a benign comic novelty. 🙃
My favorite AI fact is from cancer research. The New Yorker has a great article about how an algorithm used to identify and price out pastries at a Japanese bakery found surprising success as a cancer detector. https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-pastry-ai-that-learned-to-fight-cancer
