Kim Solez, MD

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For two years I have taught a course on Technology and the Future of Medicine, does not require a medical

background, open to all. It has caused me to reflect on the

meaning of “Future” and “Medicine”. The Gibson quote seems to be behind

people charged with talking about the future actually talking about the present and hoping you will not notice. Easier to find visuals and text that way.

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Many presentations about the future of medicine show present day technology related to genomics and personalized medicine, smart phone apps.

In the future most present day diseases may be eliminated. Medicine of the future will be increasingly about human enhancement and about improvements in society that promote health and well being.

Rudolph Virchow –”Physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor and the social problems should be largely solved by them.”

“Medicine is a social science, and politics is nothing else than medicine writ large. Medicine as a social science, as the science of human beings, has the obligations to point out problems and to attempt their theoretical solution: the politician, the practical anthropologist, must find the means for their practical solution. ”

– Rudolf Virchow

“It is the curse of humanity that it learns to tolerate even the most horrible situations by habituation. Physicians are the natural attorneys of the poor, and the social problems should largely be solved by them.”

– Rudolf Virchow

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Analytics and big data in medicine are not just about diseases and treatments.

Also about human enhancement and about improvements in society that promote health and well being.

Technology advances themselves closely tied to future of medicine, robotics, nanotechnology.

In an optimistic view of the future of medicine, medicine is huge, bigger than you ever imagined!

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Top ten most popular videos from Technology and Future of Medicine course LABMP 590 in past 30 days. Vanessa Rogers student presentation is #1. Nicholas Lee is #7. Dorian Fenton is #9. Never anticipated such popularity of student videos!

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Anonymous feedback via SurveyMonkey. Authored feedback as one assignment. Viewership numbers of broadcast quality videos provides another sort of feedback, “likes” on YouTube and Facebook. Michael Woodside nanotechnology video close to viral. Videos atwww.youtube.com/user/kimsolez

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The technological singularity occurs as artificial intelligences surpass human beings as the smartest and most capable life forms on the Earth. Technological development is taken over by the machines, who can think, act and communicate so quickly that normal humans cannot even comprehend what is going on. The machines enter into a "runaway reaction" of self-improvement cycles, with each new generation of A.I.s appearing faster and faster. From this point onwards, technological advancement is explosive, under the control of the machines, and thus cannot be accurately predicted (hence the term "Singularity"). – Ray Kurzweil

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1) The technological Singularity.

2) Existential risks, AI, genomics, and nanotech.

Post-scarcity world possible.

3) Ways to optimize a positive outcome for

humanity in the co-evolution of humans and

machines.

4) The influence of these considerations on

medicine of the future.

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(adapted from Moravec 1988 & Kurzweil 2005)

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Regulatory oversight that is completely focused on compliance. Discourages risk-taking and innovation.

Health care doesn't have the same financial reward system. Facebook isn't about to pay $1 billion for the latest hot-ticket item in imaging and informatics.

Security always trumps information sharing, and so better, faster linkages are constrained because of security concerns, most of which are bogus.

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PBS Nova Program reaches 100 million viewers. Big Bang Theory (the TV show)16 million viewers. Ray Kurzweil TED talk 1.2 million views. Singularity Summit, 9,000 views per video. Kim Solez – Technology and Future of Medicine

Course LABMP 590 1,300 views per video. The course is part of the solution: http://www.singularitycourse.com

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They attempt to surprise the viewer with futuristic stories of the present because it is easy to find good visuals for things that already exist.

The technological Singularity is a very important part of the future of medicine, but until now it has been impossible to describe how it will occur and what it will look like in a convincing way.

This may be the first time you have see a presentation about the Singularity that actually describes it and provides memorable visuals.

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Marcus Hutter suggests that there is an element of human insignificance that makes the whole scenario much more challenging. Also Hutter has created a sort of general AI which makes the problem seem more immediate!

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Outside the Singularity looking in it will be white noise.

Inside the Singularity if everything speeds up at the same rate we may not notice anything, it may seem like normal life to us.

Even if initially our biological brains count for something in our mental processes, very soon the processing power of the machine implant will vastly outstrip our biological brains. Our biological brains become insignificant regardless of the friendliness or lack thereof of the AI.

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Extreme risk taking because we can back ourselves up from backups if something bad happens.

Insignificance, lack of identity. Why wait to create backups when we have the processing power to run several lives at once. Can replicate ourselves endlessly in seconds! No more waiting 9 months!

The world has little incentive to keep identities straight when biological brains contribute so little to mental processes. Bigger not better.

Aimlessness, lack of sense of purpose.

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Part of the imagined future could be one where all disease was eliminated but life was intolerable. Another where the only diseases are from bioterrorism.

The challenge of friendly AI becomes just a small part of a much larger challenge of creating a friendly world in which humans still have lives of significance, human history is retained and extended.

A positive outcome is possible, let’s make it likely. We all need to be engaged in ensuring a positive

outcome for humanity. The future is ours to shape. We need to get busy doing that!