Hasta la vista cancer.
THE age of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is here. I suppose it's only a matter of time before Skynet launches all the nukes and the war of the machines begins.
Anyone named Sarah Connor in the Los Angeles area should consider changing their name and be on high alert for time-travelling android assassins (in some cases, cyborgs or the odd human) who appear nude in a ball of lightning at some grimy back alley.
All jokes - and references to what is considered one of the best science fiction, action and sequel films ever made - aside, just the term AI can send our imaginations running wild with doomsday scenarios and apocalyptic wars against evil robots causing widespread death and devastation.
"But AI ain't all bad", I say hoping that our future overlords come across this piece when "Judgement Day" arrives. In fact, not only is AI used widely to make our lives better, it is also used to save lives.
In Japan, an AI programme, which was created for a bakery may have ended up being used to detect cancer. Is this true?
Verdict:
TRUE
Imagine running a popular Japanese bakery chain serving a large number of people a variety of products from various doughnuts and pastries to baguettes and sourdough.
Now imagine, being Japanese of course, you would want to automate pretty much everything including the checkout process to make it quick and easy.
No problem, most shops with an automated checkout system just stick a barcode or RFID (radio frequency identification) chip on the product for the checkout machine to detect.
But this doesn't really work for freshly baked goods as they do not come in a package for you to slap a barcode on. You also wouldn't want a customer to find an RFID chip when they bite into one of your pies.
This is where the AI system, called BakeryScan, comes in. It was developed by Hisashi Kambe, a Japanese computer systems engineer and the CEO of BRAIN Co., Ltd to distinguish between various pastries at a bakery counter just by looking at them.
By combining and rewriting algorithms from different prototypes, they developed a system with 98% accuracy across 50 types of bread.
The AI could identify even the most subtle differences in baked goods by taking a photo of the pastry and analysing its features. Awesome, problem solved, fresh cookies all around.
But as with every sci-fi movie ever, Kambe and BRAIN didn't stop there, they expanded the technology and rebranded it as AI-Scan, to scan and identify more than just breakfast croissants.
Fast forward a few years, a doctor in Kyoto notices that the pastries being scanned by the device looked remarkably similar to the cancer cells he had been studying.
The doctor asked if BRAIN would be interested in testing the technology to see if it could detect cancerous cells and Kambe agreed.
They discovered that the AI could detect cancer cells at the same 98% level of accuracy.
The AI, now called "Cyto-AiSCAN", has since been used in two major hospitals in Kobe and Kyoto, Japan, helping to make the process of identifying cancer in patients faster and more accurate.
This method of early detection greatly improves survival rates and helps patients say "hasta la vista, baby" to cancer - something that I'd argue has been causing death and devastation long before Cyberdyne started making robots.
References
1. https://www.newyorker.com/
3. https://thevarsity.ca/2023/03/
