Artificial Intelligence is getting better than humans at detecting breast cancer
Since the early 2000s, AI systems have eliminated more than 1.7 million jobs, and that number will only increase as AI improves. Some research estimates that by 2025, AI will eliminate more than 85 million jobs.
But for all the talk about job security, AI is also proving to be a powerful tool in healthcare—specifically, cancer detection. One recently published study has shown that, remarkably, artificial intelligence was able to detect 20 percent more cancers in imaging scans than radiologists alone.
Published in The Lancet Oncology, the study analyzed the scans of 80,000 Swedish women with a moderate hereditary risk of breast cancer who had undergone a mammogram between April 2021 and July 2022. Half of these scans were read by AI and then a radiologist to double-check the findings. The second group of scans was read by two researchers without the help of AI. (Currently, the standard of care across Europe is to have two radiologists analyze a scan before diagnosing a patient with breast cancer.)
The study showed that the AI group detected cancer in 6 out of every 1,000 scans, while the radiologists detected cancer in 5 per 1,000 scans. In other words, AI found 20 percent more cancers than the highly-trained radiologists.
Scientists have been using MRI images (like the ones pictured here) to train artificial intelligence to detect cancers earlier and with more accuracy. Here, MIT's AI system, MIRAI, looks for patterns in a patient's mammograms to detect breast cancer earlier than ever before. news.mit.edu
But even though the AI was better able to pinpoint cancer on an image, it doesn’t mean radiologists will soon be out of a job. Dr. Laura Heacock, a breast radiologist at NYU, said in an interview with CNN that radiologists do much more than simply screening mammograms, and that even well-trained technology can make errors. “These tools work best when paired with highly-trained radiologists who make the final call on your mammogram. Think of it as a tool like a stethoscope for a cardiologist.”
AI is still an emerging technology, but more and more doctors are using them to detect different cancers. For example, researchers at MIT have developed a program called MIRAI, which looks at patterns in patient mammograms across a series of scans and uses an algorithm to model a patient's risk of developing breast cancer over time. The program was "trained" with more than 200,000 breast imaging scans from Massachusetts General Hospital and has been tested on over 100,000 women in different hospitals across the world. According to MIT, MIRAI "has been shown to be more accurate in predicting the risk for developing breast cancer in the short term (over a 3-year period) compared to traditional tools." It has also been able to detect breast cancer up to five years before a patient receives a diagnosis.
The challenges for cancer-detecting AI tools now is not just accuracy. AI tools are also being challenged to perform consistently well across different ages, races, and breast density profiles, particularly given the increased risks that different women face. For example, Black women are 42 percent more likely than white women to die from breast cancer, despite having nearly the same rates of breast cancer as white women. Recently, an FDA-approved AI device for screening breast cancer has come under fire for wrongly detecting cancer in Black patients significantly more often than white patients.
As AI technology improves, radiologists will be able to accurately scan a more diverse set of patients at a larger volume than ever before, potentially saving more lives than ever.
NASA Has the Technology to Save Us From an Asteroid Strike, But Congress Won’t Fund It
At the biannual Planetary Defense Conference earlier this year, NASA ran a simulation of an asteroid slamming into the center of Manhattan.
For several millennia now, we've been lucky, but our luck won't hold out forever.
The gathering of astronomers, planetary scientists, and FEMA disaster-response experts attempted a number of interventions that might be possible within a time window of eight years, the given warning period before impact.
Catastrophic asteroid crashes are not without precedent, and scientists say it's only a matter of time before another one occurs—that is, if we do nothing to prevent it. It's believed that a huge asteroid crash off the coast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula created a worldwide disaster that helped to speed the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
In 1908, a meteoroid less than 300 feet in diameter exploded in the air over the Tunguska region of Siberia, creating a shockwave that leveled trees for hundreds of square miles. It's a matter of sheer luck it didn't hit a major population center, where human casualties could have been enormous.
For several millennia now, we've been lucky, but our luck won't hold out forever. There are millions of asteroids circulating about in our solar system, some of them hundreds of miles across, and although the odds of a massive one crashing to Earth in the near future is statistically low, the devastation could be apocalyptic.
Back at the conference, the experts tried sending several spacecrafts to knock the asteroid off-course by slamming into it. They considered blasting it with nuclear weapons. They even considered painting it white so it absorbed less of the sun's energy, hoping that would shift the asteroid's trajectory. In the simulations, all of the interventions failed and the giant space rock crashed into Manhattan, killing 1.3 million people in a massive explosion that was 1,000 times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb.
NEOCam is designed, tested, and ready to build, but the project is currently frozen because of a $40 million gap in NASA funding.
Given more time, the scientists said, they might have succeeded in preventing the disaster. However, with today's asteroid-hunting telescopes, it's not likely we would have more warning. Our current telescopes are not powerful enough to detect all the near-earth asteroids, nor are they positioned well enough for sufficient detection. As recently as last week, for example, an asteroid traveling 15 miles a second narrowly missed crashing into the Earth, and it was only noticed several days in advance.
Now for the good news: There is a new technology that could buy us the time we need, says MIT planetary sciences professor Richard P. Binzel and colleagues who attended the conference. The Near-Earth Object Camera, or NEOCam, designed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, would detect more than 90 percent of nearby objects that are 420 feet across or larger, according to Binzel.
The powerful infrared telescope is designed to sit within the L1 Lagrange point, a stable location in space where the gravitational pulls of the Earth and the sun cancel each other out. From there, large space bodies could be detected early enough to give scientists decades of warning when an asteroid is heading for Earth. NEOCam is designed, tested, and ready to build, but the project is currently frozen because of a $40 million gap in NASA funding.
The status of NEOCam, according to Binzel, is a case-study in short-sightedness and a lack of leadership. Congress needs to raise NASA's Planetary Defense budget from its current $160 million to $200 million to get the telescope built and launched into space, a goal that would seem eminently doable within the strictures of 2020's $4.75 trillion government budget. But Binzel describes a current deadlock between NASA, Congress, and the Office of Management and Budget as a "cosmic game of chicken."
If we don't use our technology to defend the planet, "it would be the most epic failure in the history of science."
In an excruciatingly budget-conscious atmosphere, "No one wants to stick their neck out and take adult responsibility" for getting the funding allocated that would unfreeze the project, says Binzel. But, he adds, "We have a moral obligation to act."
NEOCam would not only spot the overwhelming majority of asteroids in Earth's vicinity, it would determine their size and pinpoint exactly where they are likely to strike the Earth. And it would allow us decades to act, according to Binzel. Repeated ramming by an international armada of specialized spacecraft could slightly change the trajectory of an asteroid, he says. Changing the trajectory only a tiny bit, given the scale of millions of miles and several decades for the course change to take effect, could cause an asteroid to miss the Earth altogether.
"So far we've been relying on luck," says Binzel, "but luck is not a plan." Now that we have the technology to discover what's careening through our space neighborhood, it's our ethical duty to deploy it. If we don't use our technology to gain the knowledge we need to defend the planet, Binzel concludes, "it would be the most epic failure in the history of science."
Should Congress green light the $40 million budget for the new asteroid-hunting telescope? @NASA #NASA #astroid— leapsmag (@leapsmag) 1564681293.0
A ‘Press Release from the Future’ Announces Service for Parents to Genetically Engineer Their Kids
Most people don't recognize how significantly and soon the genetic revolution will transform healthcare, the way we make babies, and the nature of the babies we make. The press release below is a thought experiment today. Within a decade, it won't be. * * *
Genomix Launches uDarwin, a New Business to Help Parents Optimize the Health, Well-Being, and Beneficial Traits of their Future Offspring
NEW YORK, July 29, 2029 /PRMediawire/ -- Genomix, a Caribbean-based health and wellness company, today announced the launch of uDarwin, a discrete, confidential service helping parents select and edit the pre-implanted embryos of their future children.
"Our mission is to help prospective parents realize their dream of parenthood in the safest manner possible while helping them optimize their future children's potential."
"We often fetishize nature," said Genomix Medical Director and Co-Founder Dr. Noam Heller, "but the traditional process of conception through sex confers risks on future children that can be significantly reduced through the careful and safe application of powerful new technologies."
Approximately three percent of all children are born with some type of harmful genetic mutation. Through its patented process of extracting eggs from the prospective mother, fertilizing these eggs with sperm from the intended father or from one of the superstar donor samples in the proprietary uDarwin gene bank, and screening up to twenty of these embryos prior to implantation, this risk can be brought down to under one percent.
"Having a baby is the most intimate and important experience in most people's lives," said Genomix CEO and co-founder Rich Azadian. "Our mission is to help prospective parents realize their dream of parenthood in the safest manner possible while helping them optimize their future children's potential."
In addition to screening pre-implanted embryos to significantly reduce disease risk, uDarwin uses its proprietary algorithm for the "polygenic scoring" of embryos to directionally predict potential future attributes including healthspan, height, IQ, personality style, and other complex genetic traits. Attributes once accepted as being the result of fate or chance can now increasingly be selected by parents from among their own natural embryos using this entirely safe process.
A premium product offering, uDarwin+, provides parents the opportunity to make up to three single gene mutations to their selected embryo to reduce a risk or confer a particular benefit. Among the most popular options for this service include increased resistance to HIV and other viruses, a greater ability to build muscle mass, and enhanced cognition. Additional edits will be made available as the science of human genome editing further advances.
Jamie Metzl's new book, Hacking Darwin: Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity, explores how the genetic revolution is transforming our healthcare, the way we make babies, and the nature of and babies we make, what this means for each of us, and what we must all do now to prepare for what's coming.
"uDarwin is proud to be the first company in the world offering the highest level of reproductive choice to parents," Mr. Azadian continued. "Genetic technologies are allowing us for the first time to crack the code of our health and identity. As pioneers in applying the most advanced genetic technologies to human reproduction, we recognize that prospective parents' desire for the services we offer exceeds societal levels of comfort with this technology. Our highest levels of customer service, comfort, and confidentiality ensure parents can secure massive benefits for their future children while avoiding unnecessary attention or any compromise of privacy."
All uDarwin services will be carried out in the company's state-of-the-art clinic aboard a super-luxury 500-foot yacht operating in international waters. After applying on the secure uDarwin website and gaining approval, clients are provided a date, time, and location to meet a company representative at a conveniently located Caribbean marina from where they will be shuttled to the uDarwin clinic. "Pioneers have always traveled beyond boundaries to create new possibilities," Mr. Azadian added. "Conceiving a child in a location where it can receive the greatest benefits of advanced science is no different."
"Pioneers have always traveled beyond boundaries to create new possibilities."
The cost of the basic uDawin service is $5 million, with half paid up front and half paid following the successful birth of a baby. Charges for uDarwin+, premium sperm or egg donors, surrogates, and other services are additional. "uDarwin is not for everyone," Mr. Azadian said, "but most parents of significant means understand that the benefits of optimal genetics far exceed almost any monetary cost."
"The genetic revolution has already begun," Medical Director Heller added. "The question for prospective parents is whether they want to be the last parents who left the health and identity of their future children to chance or the first to give their future children the greatest chance of optimal health and maximal fulfillment in the new reality that will arrive far sooner than most people appreciate."
If you could genetically alter your future children, would you? https://t.co/N0tqwX4Qd3— leapsmag (@leapsmag) 1564426548.0