The newspapers are full of stories that tout the many ways in which artificial intelligence (AI) is in the process of revolutionizing our lives. And let’s hope the hype is true, because not only could AI be used to help us do our jobs more efficiently and accurately, it could actually save our lives.
Consider how AI is already being used to prevent deaths in hospitals. In a recent newsletter, Peter Diamandis, founder and executive chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, said that over 400,000 patients die prematurely in U.S. hospitals as a result of heart attack or respiratory failure. These patients don’t die without leaving plenty of clues, he said, but given information overload, human physicians and nurses alone have no way of processing and analyzing all necessary data in time to save these patients’ lives.