How AI and Machine Learning can help healthcare

What is Artificial Intelligence (AI)?

If you’re a journalist or a venture capitalist these days, it is almost impossible to avoid the words “artificial” and “intelligence” uttered with great certainty and ultimate decisiveness in pretty much every single pitch. But what is it?

It’s often helpful to think about artificial from two different angles: Applied AI and general AI.

General Artificial Intelligence

A general AI is what most people think about when they think of artificial intelligence. In theory, this is a computer that can do almost anything, much like a human being. In practice, yes, that is the general idea, but it’s often disappointing. Alexa and Siri are probably the two best known general AIs — they work as personal assistants, and are very happy to help you with lots of things. But if you’re a heavy Siri user, you’ll probably quickly have noticed that she has some obvious limits.

For example, ask any human being living in the US “Who was the president of the U.S. last year,” and chances are pretty good that they’ll be able to give the…