34 - Smart Tools

Summary

In between the headline-making, milestone ai achievements and the smaller bits of computational intelligence that we find everywhere are impressive AI programs that are used by physicians, scientists, engineers, and business people to help them in (and sometimes automate) their workaday tasks. I call these the “smart tools” of AI. Sometimes these are stand-alone systems, but more often they are integrated into a larger computational framework or into hardware devices. Some work only when called upon to help solve some particular problem, such as disease diagnosis. Some are constantly active, such as online stock-trading systems. I'll not be able to mention all of them since there are far too many, and some are known only to their corporate and government users. But a few examples will serve to illustrate their utility and variety.

In Medicine

Let's start with how AI is being used in medical clinical practice. Beginning as early as the 1980s, AI technology has been an important part of medical systems and devices. In March 2000, a monthly magazine titled Medical Device & Diagnostic Industry published an article claiming that “the medical device industry is seeing an emergence of computer-based intelligent decision support systems (DSSs) and expert systems, the current success of which reflects a maturation of artificial intelligence (AI) technology.” It mentioned several AI-infused devices, including the “Agilent Acute Cardiac Ischemia Time-Insensitive Predictive Instrument…, an intelligent electrocardiagram (ECG) device that predicts the probability of acute cardiac ischemia (ACI), a common form of heart attack,” and the General Electric “MAC 5000 Resting Test System, [incorporating] the Marquette 12SL ECG analysis program, an integrated DSS that uses newly developed digital processing methods and diagnostic program algorithms to interpret and classify ECG waveforms.”