Microsoft has built an artificial intelligence-powered medical tool it claims is four times more successful than human doctors at diagnosing complex ailments, as the tech giant unveils research it believes could speed up treatment and save money by reducing unnecessary tests. The “Microsoft AI Diagnostic Orchestrator” is the first initiative to come out of an AI health unit formed last year by Mustafa Suleyman with staff poached from DeepMind, the research lab he co-founded and which is now owned by rival Google.
In an interview with the Financial Times, the chief executive of Microsoft AI said the trial was a step on the path to “medical superintelligence” that could help solve staffing crises and long waiting times for overstretched health systems. A version of the technology could soon also be deployed in Microsoft’s Copilot AI chatbot and Bing search engine, which handle 50mn health queries a day. We are nearing “AI models that are not just a little bit better, but dramatically better, than human performance: faster, cheaper and four times more accurate,” said Suleyman. “That is going to be truly transformative.” Suleyman’s new effort comes after Deepmind has led the way on AI-related heathcare breakthroughs. The Google lab’s chief Sir Demis Hassabis jointly won a chemistry Nobel Prize last year for using AI to unlock the biological secrets of proteins that underpin life.

Full report : Microsoft says AI system better than doctors at diagnosing complex health conditions.