DOCTOR AI WILL DIAGNOSE YOU
Would you be creeped out to hear the words “Doctor AI Will See You Now?” Probably. But chances are, a robot would be better in some ways than your own doctor.
In a Ted talk by Eric Topol, an American cardiologist and scientist, I learned about several situations where artificial intelligence saved the day. A 6 year-old, for example, suffered from nonstop pain and stunted growth for three years. He dragged his left foot and had severe headaches. When 17 doctors failed to diagnose him, his mom turned to ChatGPT. The chatbot said he had a tethered spinal cord. After surgery, he became 100 percent normal. Similarly, when a female patient was told by a dozen doctors that she had untreatable long Covid, her sister typed her symptoms into a ChatGPT search box. The AI bot said she had limbic encephalitis. After treatment, she too became 100 percent healthy.
Someday, AI will diagnose Alzheimer’s and other diseases even before symptoms appear. It will use chest X-rays to find out how well a patient’s diabetes is being controlled. From EKG machines, it will predict strokes and atrial fibrillation.
Already, it can tell if a retinal image is from a man or a woman, though a doctor guesses wrong half the time. It can find cancerous nodules in chest X-rays that radiologists miss. In 21 randomized trials, AI picked up polyps during colonoscopies better than the gastroenterologist alone. In the future, doctors won’t slave over keyboards, they’ll spend that extra time with patients. Appointments will feel more humane.
Diagnoses from 70 difficult cases analyzed by top doctors were compared to diagnoses by Chat GPT-4. In every case, the chatbot did as well or better than the physicians. For more info on AI’s huge advantage in healthcare, look up “Can AI Catch What Doctors Miss?”
High Tech Stove
I have the world’s stupidest smart stove. It stops cooking if a drop of water falls on it. Its child lock comes on unexpectedly. It has a free-floating but often unresponsive magnetic knob. (My finger does a better job of dialing a setting.) I figure it’s my stove’s fault when things burn. It’s lousy at temperature control.
What if, instead of having to remember to turn the heat down, I could set the temperature precisely, just as I do for my oven? Instead of heating a pot past the boiling point, it would continue to simmer.
I got this idea from Economist David Friedman, in a post titled “Gadgets I Would Like to See.” But this particular gadget is already available. The $80 NuWave Flex Precision Induction Cooktop– 12 inches wide– lets you set your pot temperature anywhere from 100 degrees to 500 degrees. It can be used as a toaster, a grill, a slow cooker, a warming oven, and more. Even chocolate will never burn. Just plug it in.
Auto Fill Text Messages
You can train your phone to automatically fill in your favorite words or phrases in text messages. Here’s how.
On an iPhone, go to “Settings,” then “Text Replacement.” Type a short cut for the phrase you want, such has “hth” for “happy to help.” Then when you type “hth,” in a message, the words “happy to help” will pop up. Press the space bar to insert them.
On a Samsung phone, a word will be added to the phone’s auto-fill dictionary whenever you type a space after a word in a text message. It’s called “predictive text.” The word pops up when you start to type it. Choose it if you wish.
Video Poet
Google’s experimental “Video Poet” can turn a line of text into a video. For example, when researchers typed “a dog listening to music with headphones, highly detailed” the AI bot produced a cute two-second video. It also did a great job with “two pandas playing cards,” “a squirrel in armor riding a goose” and “a horse galloping through Van Gogh’s Starry Night.” To see it in action, go to Sites.Research.Google/videopoet.
Another Day, Another Exoskeleton
Exoskeletons are hot. One of the latest is the Apogee+. It’s a high-tech body brace that helps a nurse or nurses’ assistant lift and move patients in situations which would otherwise require superhuman strength. Its grips prevent a patient from pinching, crushing or otherwise harming the worker. Unlike similar exoskeletons, which use springs or elastic parts, the Apogee+ has a robotic motor.
Free Music, Without the Copyright
As they enter the public domain, previously-copyrighted songs become available for your potential profit. For example, the original version of Cole Porter’s “Let’s Do It, (Let’s Fall In Love),” is now up for grabs. You can use, arrange, reproduce, perform, record, publish, or sell it commercially. For a list of the latest songs to enter the public domain, do a search on “Newest public domain songs.” The list at hypebot.com seems the most extensive.
Batman on Bread
Walmart’s $30 “DC Batman 2-Slice Toaster” puts a Batman logo on your bread. For $40, you can get the “Xbox Series S Toaster,” which has a wide slot for bagels.
Moon Walker Shoes
For workers who need to move quickly, Shift Robotics has a new version of last year’s $1400 Moonwalker shoes, which let you walk as fast as a runner. The new Moonwalkers X are lighter at 3.2 pounds per foot.