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Computer algorithms today
are performing incredible tasks

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with high accuracies, at a massive scale,
using human-like intelligence.

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And this intelligence of computers
is often referred to as AI

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or artificial intelligence.

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AI is poised to make an incredible impact
on our lives in the future.

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Today, however,
we still face massive challenges

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in detecting and diagnosing
several life-threatening illnesses,

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such as infectious diseases and cancer.

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Thousands of patients every year

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lose their lives
due to liver and oral cancer.

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Our best way to help these patients

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is to perform early detection
and diagnoses of these diseases.

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So how do we detect these diseases today,
and can artificial intelligence help?

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In patients who, unfortunately,
are suspected of these diseases,

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an expert physician first orders

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very expensive
medical imaging technologies

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such as fluorescent imaging,
CTs, MRIs, to be performed.

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Once those images are collected,

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another expert physician then diagnoses
those images and talks to the patient.

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As you can see, this is
a very resource-intensive process,

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requiring both expert physicians,
expensive medical imaging technologies,

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and is not considered practical
for the developing world.

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And in fact, in many
industrialized nations, as well.

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So, can we solve this problem
using artificial intelligence?

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Today, if I were to use traditional
artificial intelligence architectures

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to solve this problem,

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I would require 10,000 --

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I repeat, on an order of 10,000
of these very expensive medical images

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first to be generated.

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After that, I would then go
to an expert physician,

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who would then analyze
those images for me.

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And using those two pieces of information,

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I can train a standard deep neural network
or a deep learning network

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to provide patient's diagnosis.

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Similar to the first approach,

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traditional artificial
intelligence approaches

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suffer from the same problem.

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Large amounts of data, expert physicians
and expert medical imaging technologies.

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So, can we invent more scalable, effective

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and more valuable artificial
intelligence architectures

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to solve these very important
problems facing us today?

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And this is exactly
what my group at MIT Media Lab does.

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We have invented a variety
of unorthodox AI architectures

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to solve some of the most important
challenges facing us today

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in medical imaging and clinical trials.

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In the example I shared
with you today, we had two goals.

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Our first goal was to reduce
the number of images

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required to train
artificial intelligence algorithms.

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Our second goal -- we were more ambitious,

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we wanted to reduce the use
of expensive medical imaging technologies

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to screen patients.

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So how did we do it?

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For our first goal,

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instead of starting
with tens and thousands

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of these very expensive medical images,
like traditional AI,

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we started with a single medical image.

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From this image, my team and I
figured out a very clever way

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to extract billions
of information packets.

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These information packets
included colors, pixels, geometry

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and rendering of the disease
on the medical image.

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In a sense, we converted one image
into billions of training data points,

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massively reducing the amount of data
needed for training.

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For our second goal,

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to reduce the use of expensive medical
imaging technologies to screen patients,

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we started with a standard,
white light photograph,

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acquired either from a DSLR camera
or a mobile phone, for the patient.

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Then remember those
billions of information packets?

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We overlaid those from
the medical image onto this image,

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creating something
that we call a composite image.

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Much to our surprise,
we only required 50 --

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I repeat, only 50 --

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of these composite images to train
our algorithms to high efficiencies.

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To summarize our approach,

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instead of using 10,000
very expensive medical images,

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we can now train the AI algorithms
in an unorthodox way,

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using only 50 of these high-resolution,
but standard photographs,

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acquired from DSLR cameras
and mobile phones,

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and provide diagnosis.

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More importantly,

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our algorithms can accept,
in the future and even right now,

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some very simple, white light
photographs from the patient,

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instead of expensive
medical imaging technologies.

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I believe that we are poised
to enter an era

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where artificial intelligence

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is going to make an incredible
impact on our future.

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And I think that thinking
about traditional AI,

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which is data-rich but application-poor,

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we should also continue thinking

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about unorthodox artificial
intelligence architectures,

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which can accept small amounts of data

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and solve some of the most important
problems facing us today,

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especially in health care.

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Thank you very much.

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(Applause)