Artificial Intelligence - time for a rebrand?

The first of our AI themed Lates took place on 28th Feb at the wonderful 1, Mill Street premises. Part of the “Great Minds” series organised by the Warwick Health Global Research Priority group, this evening was a collaboration with Resonate to discuss the role of AI in healthcare.

Our four speakers took us on a journey through how AI works, what it can do and how researchers are using it to speed up and facilitate their research. First year PhD student Fraser Birks started us off with a whistle-stop tour of how AI systems are trained and the limitations of what they can and can’t do. Next up, Dr. John James from Warwick Medical School showed us how AI has radically transformed the drug discovery pathway from taking years to less than 30 days. From the School of Engineering, PhD student Busola Oronti showed us how she is using AI and deep learning to support early disease detection and diagnosis and management of disease, especially in low or middle income countries. Our final speaker was Dr. Simon Graham on how Warwick spinoff, Histofy, are revolutionising healthcare with AI for pathology, speeding up the process of cancer detection, grading and subtyping. We were joined by the Warwick AI Society who demonstrated their projects Language Buddy (apps to help people learn languages) and What's Not To Like (a browser extension which searches the internet to find reviews about products you’re interested in).

Questions and comments added to the discussion and there was a general agreement that AI is such a powerful too, but there is a risk that misinformation and an understanding gap might be hindering widespread acceptance of its use. The concept of AI as a ‘black box’ was raised a number of times and one member of the audience suggested that we need a better name than ‘Artificial Intelligence’. Your suggestions for new names for this collection of technologies would be very welcome - tweet us @warwickengages

Our second AI themed Lates is on 8th March - book your tickets here.