Your A.I. Doctor Will See You Now...

[Music] Around one in five people around the world will develop cancer in their lifetime, with one in nine men and one in 12 women dying from the disease. Basically, for every six people that die around the world, one of them dies from cancer. Cancer is one of the scariest things in the world, and rightfully so. It's said that if you live long enough, cancer will inevitably come for you.

It's no surprise that our society has been trying to find a cure for cancer basically since we knew what it was. With artificial intelligence, we stand a better chance than ever in this war against cancer. This is how AI is transforming healthcare. In a recent study, researchers from the University of Toronto and ENC Silico Medicine used a computer program called AlphaFold, along with a tool called Pharma, to speed up the design and synthesis of a drug that could potentially treat Hepatocellular carcinoma, the most common type of primary liver cancer. The AI tool found a new target to attack the cancer in a molecule that would stick to that target. This molecule could be included in a new cancer treatment drug. The researchers completed all of this in just 30 days.

Now imagine what they could do with more time and more powerful AI tools. We're still at the early stages with tools like AlphaFold, and the problem is that cancer isn't just one thing; it's not just one disease like the flu. It's a multitude of diseases, requiring different treatment plans and cures. But scientists have realized that right now our best chance at fighting cancer is being able to diagnose it as early as possible. This is where we can see just how incredible artificial intelligence can be.

Last year, I went to Japan, and while in Tokyo, I went to a pastry shop with seemingly endless supplies of pastries. There were pies, cakes, sandwiches, croissants—anything you could ever want. When I picked up everything I wanted, I went up to the register, put all my pastries on the counter, and what I thought was the cash register fired up these green lights that scanned all my pastries. The screen then displayed everything I bought and how much I owed. This was one of the more subtle tech things I had seen in Japan, and so I didn't think anything of it.

A couple of months ago, I read an article titled "The AI Pastry Scanner That's Fighting Cancer," and that's when it struck me: that wasn't just a cash register; it was an AI used to recognize all the different types of pastries I bought. And now that same AI that was designed for bakeries is being used to diagnose cancer. A doctor at Kyoto's Lewis Pasteur Center for Medical Research discovered that some cancer cells look almost exactly like donuts under a microscope. So he contacted the team that created the AI bakery scanner, and Cyto AI Scan was born.

Today, the cancer diagnosing AI can identify cancerous urinary cells with up to 99% accuracy. The same technology is also being used to differentiate pills and locate problems in mechanical engineering. Artificial intelligence has taken over our world in the past couple of years. ChatGPT got a million users in five days, and its parent company OpenAI has just taken the world by storm again after releasing Sora, their text-video AI platform. This platform has gotten even the best video creators in the world worried.

However, what we don't often hear about, because it's not as exciting, is what AI is doing in the world of healthcare. According to Harvard School of Public Health, using AI to make diagnoses can reduce treatment costs by up to 50%, while increasing health outcomes by 40%. So you're getting much better care at half the price.

In one study, U.S., German, and French researchers used AI to scan more than 100,000 images to identify skin cancers. They found they got better results than the 58 international dermatologists who were given a similar test. Several studies have also shown that AI is already better at spotting malignant tumors than the best radiologists in the world. When you consider that artificial intelligence is only going to get better, you can see why those in this field of research are excited.

In many areas across the globe, there aren't enough...