This week, about a mile from my home, one of the top Artificial Intelligence (AI) conferences on the West Coast is being held : AI NEXTCon Seattle.
I’m excited because I’m going!
This begs the question: why, as a physician, I am so excited about going?
It’s certainly not a healthcare conference per se.
I don’t see any doctors speaking, at least of the medical kind. And most of the companies represented are technology companies such as Microsoft, Facebook and Uber. Large healthcare companies, such as CVS, United Health Group and Kaiser just aren’t there.
Perhaps it’s the engineer in me? I was an engineer before my medical school thing so this could be a factor. .
Or maybe it’s the geek in me? I loved the new Star Wars episode last week , and lets face it, who doesn’t love the droids?
But actually it’s none of the above.
You see, I have a theory, inspired by tens of thousands of patients and thousands of hours of medical reading – and it’s a theory most physicians would strongly agree with.
My theory is this:
Health, (and note that I’m talking about health and not healthcare, is driven by the confluence of three factors:
- Genetics.
- Environment.
- Behavior.
AI, and it’s close cousins, the Semantic Web, Big Data , and the Internet of Things, are making their presence known in the field of genetics, and they are also beginning to take root (no pun intended) in understanding people’s social environment,
But what I am mostly interested in is what these companies doing are doing in the area of behavior, or more specifically, behavioral modification.
My is interest in this area began several years ago when I read Facebook’s somewhat controversial study on their experiments involving hundreds of thousands of people studying emotional contagion: Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks
Since then, possibly because of the public’s relatively negative response to this study (mostly centering around questions of the lack of informed consent of the participants), there haven’t exactly been a slew of research papers from major corporations discussing what they’re doing in this field.
But we would be naïve to think these and other similar companies are not looking into behavior modification via AI aggressively.
Now I come to my second theory – (or perhaps hypothesis would be a more appropriate term):
Companies such as Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, Google, Apple and Twitter aren’t just technology companies; they are behavioral change companies, and AI is one of their principal tools.
This theory/hypothesis is not held, or even being considered, by the majority of physicians, but if true, it is quite important.
Consider this.
When we look at the Googles and Amazons of the world as behavioral change agents, we all can agree they are masters at modifying and changing online behaviors while we’re sitting in front of our computer or looking at our smart phone.
It’s also safe to say that as publicly traded companies, they are doing this fundamentally to maximize profit by changing our behavior as consumers. I would expect no less, and I don’t have a much of a problem with this.
However, if we can look at these companies -not just as changing consumer online behavior but as changing our personal behaviors – then, – in theory – they could have significant effect on both a given individual’s health and a population’s health.
Rephrased : True prevention of cancer and heart disease, or perhaps the more pressing problem, arresting the obesity epidemic, may be coming from a Google, Facebook or Apple rather than the NIH.
Anyway, that’s why I’m going to this conference, and if I see any future applications of this technology which may play a role in improving people’s health in this way, I’ll let you know.