Report: London Hospitals to Replace Doctors with AI

London hospitals will soon replace doctors and nurses with artificial intelligence for various medical tasks, according to a report.

Through a partnership between the Alan Turing Institute and University College London Hospitals (UCLH), A.I. will be used for a variety of tasks, including “diagnosing cancer” and “deciding which A&E patients are seen first.”

“At the heart of the partnership, in which UCLH is investing a ‘substantial’ but unnamed sum, is the belief that machine learning algorithms can provide new ways of diagnosing disease, identifying people at risk of illness and directing resources,” the Guardian reported. “In theory, doctors and nurses could be responsively deployed on wards, like Uber drivers gravitating to locations with the highest demand at certain times of day. But the move will also trigger concerns about privacy, cyber security and the shifting role of health professionals.”

In January, it was reported that Stanford researchers had created artificial intelligence which could predict when hospital patients would die, while artificial intelligence has also been used to detect the leading cause of childhood blindness and the most common causes of dementia and stroke.

“It’s going to be a game-changer… You can go on your phone and book an airline ticket, decide what movies you’re going to watch or order a pizza… it’s all about AI,” declared UCLH NHS Foundation Trust Professor Bryan Williams. “On the NHS, we’re nowhere near sophisticated enough. We’re still sending letters out, which is extraordinary.”