The potential and the pitfalls of medical AI

THE BOOKS strewn around Pearse Keane’s office at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London are an unusual selection for a medic. “The Information”, a 500-page doorstop by James Gleick on the mathematical roots of computer science, sits next to Neal Stephenson’s even heftier “Cryptonomicon”, an alt-history novel full of cryptography and prime numbers. Nearby is “The Player of Games” by the late Iain M. Banks, whose sci-fi novels describe a utopian civilisation in which AI has abolished work.

Dr Keane is an ophthalmologist by training. But “if I could have taken a year or two from my medical training to do a computer-science degree, I would have,” he says. These days he is closer to the subject than any university student. In 2016 he began a collaboration with DeepMind, an AI firm owned by Google, to apply AI to ophthalmology.