AI may be as good as humans when it comes to medical diagnoses

Artificial intelligence is increasingly being used in the clinic, and a new study finds that the technology may be as effective as humans when it comes to diagnoses. Researchers reviewed 14 studies that compared AI-based diagnoses to those made by health professionals and found that when it came to correctly diagnosing people who were sick, AI algorithms and people were correct roughly 86% of the time. Algorithms and health professionals were also evenly matched when it came to correctly identifying those who didn’t have a specific condition. Still, the authors of the review found only a small number of studies sufficiently comparing AI diagnostics to those conducted by people — fewer than 1% of the more than 20,500 studies that were initially reviewed — and call for more thorough research to better evaluate the emerging technology.