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AI Can Predict Heart Attacks More Accurately Than Doctors (digitaltrends.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Digital Trends: Scientists from the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom have managed to develop an algorithm that outperforms medical doctors when it comes to predicting heart attacks. As it stands, around 20 million people fall victim to cardiovascular disease, which includes heart attacks, strokes, and blocked arteries. Today, doctors depend on guidelines similar to those of the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association (ACC/AHA) in order to predict individuals' risks. These guidelines include factors like age, cholesterol level, and blood pressure. In employing computer science, Stephen Weng, an epidemiologist at the University of Nottingham, took the ACC/AHA guidelines and compared them to four machine-learning algorithms: random forest, logistic regression, gradient boosting, and neural networks. The artificially intelligent algorithms began to train themselves using existing data to look for patterns and create their own "rules." Then, they began testing these guidelines against other records. And as it turns out, all four of these methods "performed significantly better than the ACC/AHA guidelines," Science reports. The most successful algorithm, the neural network, actually was correct 7.6 percent more often than the ACC/AHA method, and resulted in 1.6 percent fewer false positives. That means that in a sample size of around 83,000 patient records, 355 additional lives could have been saved.
these methods "performed significantly better than the ACC/AHA guidelines,"
Yeah outperforming the general written guidelines is totally the same as outperforming a live doctor.
"Helpful tool that may substitute rule-of-thumb guidelines for doctors", maybe.
In law enforcement you even get feedback loops where the AI is trained on the police arrest data, which guides the police to where to place enforcement for better arrests, which guides the AI which guides the police which guides the AI which guides the police....
Obviously is focusses the police in a crime area and all their arrests are focussed on that area because that is where they are.
The companies hire smart people, who understand the problem, but the corporate interest is to *sell* the AI, and this feedback loop also makes the AI look better.
There does appear to be an awful lot of sloppy science going on in datamining currently.
"let's not pretend that AI had 5 hours of sleep in the last 48, had a shower, drove to work, checked on the kids and yet..." -- and that is exactly why I am eagerly looking forward to getting all my medical treatment from an AI just as soon as technologically possible. I don't want to be seen (or cut on) by a human who has had 5 hours of sleep in the last 48, even if somehow the profession has gotten itself in the position where that is bragged about. No other profession with potentially deadly consequences (aircraft pilots, truck drivers, military) treats sleep deprivation so casually. No thanks, I'll take my chances with the ever wakeful AI.