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Best Technology Articles You Should Read Today (10/13)

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The meat and potatoes of this piece are in the seven analyses, which are based on credible sources (e.g., Gartner, PwC) and worth reading. Here are the highlights, with my emphases:
  • 1 billion video cameras could eventually connect to artificial intelligence platforms.
  • 20% of companies will dedicate workers to oversee neural networks by 2020.
  • The artificial intelligence market will be worth $59.8 billion by 2025, but that's not the entire picture.
  • 30% of market-leading companies could have their revenues siphoned off by AI.
  • 38% of jobs in the U.S. could be vulnerable to AI by the early 2030s.
  • Smart voice assistants will be in 4 billion devices this year, and they're big business.
  • AI in driverless cars could save 300,000 lives in America each decade.

The age old question -- to regulate or not.  Naturally, it depends on what we’re talking about, and IBM sought a critical distinction in the definition of "medical device" based on what may be non-existent differences. According to FiereHealthcare:
For several years, IBM has been stepping up lobbying efforts to ensure that its artificial intelligence software is protected from federal regulation, and it’s continuing those efforts as the Food and Drug Administration prepares to issue important guidance on clinical decision support (CDS) software next year.
In the buildup to the passage of the 21st Century Cures Act, the company pressured lawmakers to ensure that Watson would not be regulated as a medical device by the FDA. The company spent $26.4 million on lobbying between 2013 and June 2017, although IBM says a fraction of that went toward health software regulation.
Here’s what IBM didn’t get:
Software that analyzes medical information and provides clinicians with recommendations about diagnosis or medical treatment is exempt under the law, but only if the healthcare professional can review the basis of the information. (emphasis added)
That strikes me as pretty easy to swallow considering that IBM has spent countless years and dollars advertising Watson as a mechanism to cull potential solutions from mountains of data and research so that a physician could review those results and make a clinical diagnosis. And, I should add, possibly a diagnosis that (s)he might otherwise not have been able to make. I have no doubt that IBM would love to have Watson completely decoupled from the definition of a medical advice and not have the basis of its recommendations reviewed. Why? Because the next natural step is for Watson to work without a physician at all -- and that would be worth hundreds of billions. 
Not quite. Or at least not yet. According to Reshma Ramachandran, co-chair of the FDA Task Force at the National Physicians Alliance: “Until we understand the basis for the AI and how the algorithms work, there really needs to be that third-party check and transparency. We want to make sure there’s no harm done at the end of the road.”
Interacting with a machine may seem like a strange and impersonal way to seek mental health care, but advances in technology and artificial intelligence are making that type of engagement more and more a reality.



According to Stanford News:
Stanford scholars Adam Miner, Arnold Milstein and Jeff Hancock examined the benefits and risks associated with this trend in a Sept. 21 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association. They discuss how technological advances now offer the capability for patients to have personal health discussions with devices like smartphones and digital assistants.
The remainder of the article is an interview with these scholars about this trend. If this is of particular interest to you, the article in prestigious JAMAis free.

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