Thinking About Applications of AI
In October of 1997, about three and a half years before I was born, my mother gave birth to my sister. Like any parents, mine immediately found new love and care for her. She was a beautiful baby, and they knew that day that their lives had changed forever, for the better. There was a uniqueness about her, however, that maybe changed them more than they could have imagined.
By the age of one year old, I was one of the happiest and bubbliest children out there. I was already walking, talking, curious, and adventurous. For my sister, however, it took her several years to reach that stage in life. She rarely walked, could not talk, and seemed to not notice or care about the world around her.
Not long after I had first been brought into this world, my parents decided to take us to the zoo. Usually when we went out, my sister would spend most of the time crying and screaming and would refuse to get out of the stroller. This time was different, though. Upon seeing all the zoo animals, she got out of her stroller, fed the animals, walked around, was visibly happy, and for the first time, she was able to acknowledge that there was a world around her.
For years, my parents were worried and concerned every single day about their first-born. At the age of three, my sister was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder. Autism is a tricky thing for doctors — it is incredibly difficult to diagnose, even more so in the late 90’s, due to the fact that the diagnosis is based on a spectrum.
Fast forward to today in 2021, where I am a computer science student at Wentworth Institute of Technology, in my second-to-last semester before I graduate. I have studied all sorts of computer-related subjects, ranging between programming to networking. One thing that specifically caught my attention (and the attention of many others) was artificial intelligence.
As I took a class studying the basics of AI, I began to wonder about the things that AI could do for our society — both the good and bad. Specifically, I thought, “could artificial intelligence detect autism at an earlier stage than it can currently be detected?”
I figure that the answer is absolutely it could. People who have been diagnosed with ASD have a lot in common, but also share many behavioral differences, which can make the diagnosis more difficult to make. However, if doctors are able to look at the behavior of child over the course of a couple years and confidently diagnose them with autism, I figure that a computer could do that in even less time. Maybe AI could even detect the differences that autism makes in a child’s brain at a young age.
My limited research has told me that there are already companies who are working on using AI to do not only exactly what I have just spoken about, but also to treat those who have autism, which is incredible. The amount of stress that artificial intelligence could have potentially saved my parents by detecting my sister’s autism sooner is immeasurable, and I’m sure many people feel the same way, not only about autistic children, but people with medical issues in general.
As another example, my grandfather suffered an unexpected series of strokes a few years back. It changed everything for my mother, as her father was the only parent she had. Amazingly, he survived the event, but if the doctors could have known about it before it happened, maybe he never would have suffered those strokes.
AI could clearly solve a plethora of problems and answer a lot of questions that exist in the medical field. It could be (and surely has been) the thing that saves somebody’s life — and it can make predictions that human beings simply are not able to make.
