CERN - At Davos Alphabet's CEO Calls Healthcare the Major AI Opportunity
During a panel discussion today at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG) shared some upbeat thoughts on how AI and healthcare could intersect.
"Cancer [is] often missed and the difference in outcome is profound," he said, according to Reuters. "In lung cancer, for example, five experts agree this way and five agree the other way. We know we can use artificial intelligence to make it better."
Two years ago at the 2018 Davos conference, Pichai said, "A.I. is probably the most important thing humanity has ever worked on" -- more profound, he said, than electricity or fire. But many observers worry about who will control artificial intelligence, and how it might be used in harmful ways -- for instance, to spy on people. And the concerns about the damage this technology could do to privacy are growing more intense as Alphabet and other tech giants move into the medical space, and seek access to our health information and data.