<story><title>&quot;AI will cure cancer&quot; misunderstands both AI and medicine</title><url>https://rachel.fast.ai/posts/2024-02-20-ai-medicine/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yashap</author><text>I do think AI has a chance to make healthcare, for cancer and other diseases, a lot more proactive.&lt;p&gt;Even though we know prognosis is much better for cancer, and many other diseases, if you catch it early, we do essentially nothing to catch it early. My understanding is that this is because:&lt;p&gt;1. Administering regular MRIs, blood panels, etc. is expensive, in terms of the initial data collection&lt;p&gt;2. It’s also expensive, in terms of getting healthcare professionals to analyze the results&lt;p&gt;3. People often get the analysis wrong, in terms of both false negatives and false positives&lt;p&gt;4. False positives can lead to even more scans, analysis, etc., costing even more money&lt;p&gt;It does seem possible to me that specialized AI could get much better than humans at interpreting this data, doing it very cheaply (solving problem 2) with far fewer false negatives and false positives (solving 3 and 4). And it’s even possible that AI powered robotics gets great at collecting data in the first place, bringing down the cost of problem 1.&lt;p&gt;Basically, “AI invents cures for different types of cancer” seems like a moonshot, but “AI makes proactive medical scanning cheap and effective, thus greatly improving cancer outcomes” seems like a real possibility.&lt;p&gt;While we have some proactive screening for some types of cancer, the status quo for many types of cancer&amp;#x2F;patients is “wait until the cancer has spread enough that the patient is experiencing significant symptoms, with no systematic way to detect cancer early.” This is clearly not great. We’re accepting this for practical reasons today, but I do think AI has a significant chance to greatly improve the status quo here.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>pheewma</author><text>There are also downstream consequences of ordering tests aside from cost; not all tests are harmless. As an example, regular screening for prostate cancer isn&amp;#x27;t recommended as much. Partially because it is often so slow-growing that people often die of other causes before the cancer even begins to cancer, and because the definitive test is a biopsy which is somewhat invasive. Rates of complications are relatively low, but it becomes a cost-benefit consideration (again, irrespective of cost) of if those risks are worth catching something that you may not even want to bother treating.</text></comment>
<story><title>&quot;AI will cure cancer&quot; misunderstands both AI and medicine</title><url>https://rachel.fast.ai/posts/2024-02-20-ai-medicine/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>yashap</author><text>I do think AI has a chance to make healthcare, for cancer and other diseases, a lot more proactive.&lt;p&gt;Even though we know prognosis is much better for cancer, and many other diseases, if you catch it early, we do essentially nothing to catch it early. My understanding is that this is because:&lt;p&gt;1. Administering regular MRIs, blood panels, etc. is expensive, in terms of the initial data collection&lt;p&gt;2. It’s also expensive, in terms of getting healthcare professionals to analyze the results&lt;p&gt;3. People often get the analysis wrong, in terms of both false negatives and false positives&lt;p&gt;4. False positives can lead to even more scans, analysis, etc., costing even more money&lt;p&gt;It does seem possible to me that specialized AI could get much better than humans at interpreting this data, doing it very cheaply (solving problem 2) with far fewer false negatives and false positives (solving 3 and 4). And it’s even possible that AI powered robotics gets great at collecting data in the first place, bringing down the cost of problem 1.&lt;p&gt;Basically, “AI invents cures for different types of cancer” seems like a moonshot, but “AI makes proactive medical scanning cheap and effective, thus greatly improving cancer outcomes” seems like a real possibility.&lt;p&gt;While we have some proactive screening for some types of cancer, the status quo for many types of cancer&amp;#x2F;patients is “wait until the cancer has spread enough that the patient is experiencing significant symptoms, with no systematic way to detect cancer early.” This is clearly not great. We’re accepting this for practical reasons today, but I do think AI has a significant chance to greatly improve the status quo here.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jcims</author><text>We found out about my daughter&amp;#x27;s type 1 diabetes purely by accident.  I found a blood glucose test kit doing some spring cleaning and asked the family to gather around to check our sugar.  It was really just a joke but I thought it would be fun.  Queue three results around 100 and one at 270.  We tested again the next day and it was 290.&lt;p&gt;Finding type 1 diabetes this way in a young teenager was so absolutely out of the norm that a major children&amp;#x27;s hospital had no idea what to do with her.  They admitted her because it was protocol but it was completely unnecessary and we had to explain how it happened at least ten times while we were there.&lt;p&gt;It was an eye opening experience.</text></comment>