Artificial intelligence won’t solve all of medicine’s great problems

USA Today

This post has been archived and contains information that may be out of date.

Almost 20 years ago, the medical and scientific communities were overjoyed. With the Human Genome Project finished, there was an air of inevitability that the causes of some of the most common and destructive diseases would soon be pinpointed and eradicated. It’d be simple: one gene, one problem, one solution. We even heard Francis Collins, at the time, say “over the longer term, perhaps in another 15 or 20 years, you will see a complete transformation in therapeutic medicine.” Unfortunately, it was never going to be that easy.