Will AI help us love and live better?

By Reka Agopcsa

AI seems to permeate all discussions on digital technology today. At the recent Big Data London event that our team attended, a speaker said        “There is probably someone in the audience now with a clicker, counting how many times AI is mentioned at the show”. She could have been right – discussions during the day centred on AI’s potential and what data  companies can do to enable it.

The event inspired me to think big and consider where I would welcome    more AI in my life and the lives of those I love.

My clever mum likes to say that “all you need in life is love and good health”    – so that might be a good place to start! But while there is much to be said about AI-assisted dating apps that promise to cut down on awkward small-talk and ghosting, it’s AI-driven healthcare initiatives that are attracting                                                                                                        soaring investment – for good reason.

Analyst company Omdia forecasts that healthcare spending on AI software will increase by 40% throughout 2023. Fast-forward to 2027, and healthcare will only be eclipsed by the consumer industry in terms of AI spending.

So, what can we reasonably expect from AI-driven health tech in the future? Above all, speed.

Today, it takes around 10 years to bring a new drug to market. AI can shave months, perhaps even years, off this process by accelerating the virtual synthesis of molecules, known as in silico testing. Another area is medical image analysis. Tools such as Brainomix’s e-Stroke can reduce door-in door-out time (the time between arrival and discharge from hospital) from 140 to 79 minutes by helping clinicians interpret stroke brain scans and identify patients who need urgent treatments or transfer to a specialist hospital. It was also recently found that AI can detect 20% more breast cancers from mammograms than traditional screening, which often yields false positives.

Another area to be excited about is AI-driven training to reduce workforce shortages. Just last month, The Independent reported on a new technology that can help train 20,000 new carers a year, in multiple languages. If that’s not cause for optimism, I don’t know what is!

Will AI revolutionise our love lives? Maybe not, but it might just help us live better.