I gave a keynote speech late last year at Technology Awareness Day, hosted by the University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus about Big Data, Tech acceleration, and Artificial Intelligence, as applied to healthcare.
I enjoy making my colleagues uncomfortable. How long will doctors have jobs? Will the AI eliminate internal medicine doctors? If Watson can beat humans at Jeopardy, can it beat me at reading medical literature? Can it be dermatologists at diagnosing skin cancer? Can it beat radiologists at interpreting CT scan images?
It is true that the most complex object known to us is the human brain, with its trillions of neurons and extensive interconnections. From this physical matter, something called “general adaptive intelligence” and “consciousness” arises, neither of which we understand or know how to construct or deconstruct. On the other hand, fundamentally though, isn’t a neuron a collection of physical and chemical processes that we DO understand? And then extrapolating upward then, is it not conceivable that we could eventually figure out how to construct a human brain in all its complexity? Hmm.
Reading books like “Life 3.0” and “Superintelligence” gets me thinking about stuff like this. It is both humbling and exciting at the same time.
CMIO’s take? Decide for yourself. I know, it is almost an hour long, and who has an hour anymore, especially if TED speakers can get their point across in 10 minutes? Well, consider my talk a series of 4-5 TED talks. Yeah, that’s it.
