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janrinok writes:

Several weeks back, Bill Gates was proclaiming the dark side of artificial intelligence (AI). Teradata's John Thuma believes that Bill Gates is wrong, and explains how big data and machine intelligence could be a massive game changer if only we can get over our fear of progress:

If I can come up with a computer doctor better than your current doctor, would you as a patient consider it? Would you as a doctor use it? For example, if we do an analysis of common genes between diseases such as obesity and asthma, we can construct a virtual dictionary that defines those genes. We can then take the human genome and check it against that dictionary to see who's got those genes and use a proven data source to see who's afflicted with either of the diseases. With that information we can predict who's obese and who's asthmatic, and vice versa. If we can do that across a collection of diseases, we would have a tool for being proactive with healthcare and promoting wellness.

I'm not saying we'll ever want to get rid of doctors, but we must overcome fear that stops us from making progress. Right now, humans are on the front line of fields like healthcare and machine intelligence is in the background. In the future we'll see machines move closer to the front under the governance of doctors.

So Soylentils, do you agree with Thurma, or do you think that we are treading a very dangerous path?