Learn how technology is helping us get smarter when it comes to hurricane predictions. Then, Dr. Louis Rosenberg, CEO of Unanimous AI, explains how doctors were able to outsmart cutting-edge artificial intelligence by using swarm intelligence to combine their expertise. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following story from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Hurricane Prediction Is Getting Smarter Thanks to Technology Additional resources from Unanimous AI: Unanimous AI Website Swarm AI Outperforms in Stanford Medical Study Unanimous AI achieves 22% more accurate pneumonia diagnoses | VentureBeat This Startup Correctly Predicted the Oscars, World Series, and Super Bowl. Here's What It's Doing Next | Inc. Can Swarm Intelligence Solve Humanity's Biggest Problems? | Full-Length Curiosity Podcast Interview (February 2018) Please leave us a 5-star rating on our Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing! We'd also love to hear about you and get help improving our show. Feel free to take our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! Learn about these topics and more onCuriosity.com, and download our5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation onFacebook,Twitter, andInstagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable ourAlexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Learn how technology is helping us get smarter when it comes to hurricane predictions. Then, Dr. Louis Rosenberg, CEO of Unanimous AI, explains how doctors were able to outsmart cutting-edge artificial intelligence by using swarm intelligence to combine their expertise.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following story from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: Hurricane Prediction Is Getting Smarter Thanks to Technology
Additional resources from Unanimous AI:
Please leave us a 5-star rating on our Amazon Alexa Flash Briefing! We'd also love to hear about you and get help improving our show. Feel free to take our listener survey! https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/curiosity-listener-survey
If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron!
Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/doctors-beat-ai-with-swarm-intelligence-w-dr-louis-rosenberg-unanimous-ai-ceo-plus-hurricane-prediction-technology
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi. From the award-winning curiositydotcom, I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today, we're switching up our format a little bit, and we're going to help you get smarter about cutting edge technology.
CODY GOUGH: We've got a story about advances in hurricane prediction technology plus an interview with Dr. Louis Rosenberg-- founder and CEO of Unanimous AI.
ASHLEY HAMER: Longtime listeners might remember Dr. Rosenberg from when we interviewed him back in February. Today, he's back with some exciting updates on the power of swarm intelligence.
CODY GOUGH: Let's satisfy some curiosity.
ASHLEY HAMER: Our thoughts go out to everyone who had to deal with Hurricane Florence last week and who's still dealing with the aftermath. We're posting this episode a couple of days after we recorded it. So we don't really know what the full scale of the hurricane was, but we're really hoping that it's not too devastating.
CODY GOUGH: We hope you stayed safe and you'll be able to get back to your regular routine soon.
ASHLEY HAMER: If you've experienced a hurricane firsthand, then you know how devastating it can be. But we have some good news that might make you feel a little better. Hurricane prediction is getting a lot smarter thanks to technology. Let's talk specifics. Back in 1992, when the Category 5 Hurricane Andrew made landfall in Florida, scientists only had two ways of measuring a hurricane strength.
The first was analyzing wind speed with an aircraft. And the second was comparing satellite images of the hurricane to those of similar hurricanes in the past. Then scientists would use statistical models based on patterns in previous storms that might help them predict what would happen next. That was enough to give them a roughly three-day forecast to where hurricanes like Andrew were headed, with an average error about 300 miles, not great.
But since then, we've gotten a lot better thanks to HMON and HWRF from the National Weather Service. These computer models use supercomputers and dynamical approaches that predict things based on current events rather than past storms. These new models can extend the possible hurricane forecast from three days to five days. There's still a 300-mile margin of error at five days out. But at three days out, it's less than 100 miles.
One other thing is helping and it has to do with storm surges. When the ocean swells, you can get floods pretty far inland. And about half of the deaths associated with tropical cyclones in the last 50 years have been thanks to storm surges. But a lot of people have never even heard of storm surges.
So to fix that, the National Hurricane Center has started issuing storm surge warnings. They're also issuing warnings of high winds further in advance. There's still a lot we don't know about hurricanes, but we're better off than we used to be.
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ASHLEY HAMER: Right. Exactly.
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CODY GOUGH: Artificial intelligence is all the rage, but using swarm intelligence might be the best way to solve the world's biggest problems. Dr. Louis Rosenberg is the founder and CEO of Unanimous AI-- an artificial intelligence company that amplifies human intelligence by building hive minds modeled after biological swarms.
Basically, swarm intelligence connects people over the internet using AI algorithms modeled after swarms in nature. That helps people combine their expertise in a way that's similar to the way birds flock together or bees swarm. Here's part of my conversation with Dr. Rosenberg about a recent project that showcased just how powerful swarm intelligence can be.
LOUIS ROSENBERG: Yeah. So as you said, there are a lot of people worried about AI because in a lot of different professions, people are developing AI systems that can outperform people. And one particular field that generates a lot of concern among professionals is radiology because there's been a number of systems out there where software, by itself, can diagnose X-rays or MRI or CAT scans and do it with an accuracy that rivals human doctors.
And so as you said, last year, Stanford made headlines because they have a system called Checks Net that diagnoses chest X-rays. And they found that their software that's developed using deep learning can outperform individual radiologists. And so you could imagine if you're a radiologist, that would make you worried. You've gone to school for 12 years to go to college and medical school and be a resident and intern, and now a piece of software can be just as accurate as you.
And so after they made that breakthrough, we-- Unanimous AI partnered with Stanford Medical School to say, OK, if this deep learning system is better than individual doctors, that's interesting. But what would happen if we took a small group of radiologists and connected them together as a swarm intelligence and had them diagnosed chest X-rays? What would the accuracy look like?
And so we did a study with Stanford which resulted in academic paper that just recently published where we had these swarms of doctors-- you can consider it a medical hive mind, you know? And these doctors, they weren't in the same room. They could be anywhere. And so they're all at their own desk and it could be a small group-- 5, 6, 7, 8 doctors.
And a chest X-ray would pop up on all their screens at the same time and then they were asked to make a diagnosis of whether or not the patient has pneumonia. And so we had them do this pneumonia diagnosis alone as individuals and then we also had them do this pneumonia diagnosis together as a swarm AI system.
And what we found is that when they work together with a swarm AI system, we reduced their error rate by 33%. So they had 33% fewer errors when they were working together as a swarm intelligence as compared to when they were diagnosing on their own. We also compared against the state-of-the-art Check Net system, which is the best deep learning system out there that just uses software. And we found that this swarm of doctors was 22% more accurate than that machine learning system.
And so what we were able to do is take the title back for humans. So now, the humans were, again, better than the pure software. But really, what we're seeing is that if you combine real people with AI algorithms-- a combination of human knowledge and intuition and wisdom and experience with the power of AI, we can get diagnostic accuracy that's significantly more accurate than individual people, individual doctors on their own, or pure software systems on their own.
So humans plus AI is better than humans or AI. And that was really the big result from this study we did with Stanford.
CODY GOUGH: If you want to hear the other 20 minutes or so of my conversation with Dr. Rosenberg, then visit our Patreon page at Patreon.com/curiositydotcom all spelled out. The entire uncut interview will be free for everyone next week. But it's available right now for all of our Patreon supporters at every level. We want everyone to hear the whole interview, but our patrons get to go to the front of the line as our way of saying thank you for supporting us.
You can find a link to our Patreon page in today's show notes, but one more time, that's Patreon.com/curiositydotcom. Join us again tomorrow for the Curiosity Daily, and learn something new in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Stay curious.
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SPEAKER: On the Westwood One Podcast Network.