Good Stuff Outside of Publishing

AI lies behind some groundbreaking achievements outside of publishing. Medicine is AI’s poster child, but there are also powerful stories from other industries. The relevance to publishing stems from a rhetorical question: AI can save lives. But you don’t think it can help publishers?

The aim for this short section is merely to counter the argument that, unconvinced that AI is going to help publishing, can AI possibly help anyone at all?

Reading a March 2024 issue of The Economist, I dug into its technology supplement on health and AI. Over the last few years, medicine consistently featured as artificial intelligence’s bright spot. Most of the reports are positive. But still The Economist feature will floor you. They do express numerous well-articulated reservations. But you will also read that AI in medicine “represents an opportunity to improve the lives of hundreds of millions, even billions.”

Another rhetorical question for those who would seek either to ban AI technology, or at least to put a moratorium on its development: would you sacrifice its potential value to the health of millions to satisfy your anxiety about an uncertain future?

We’ve been there: the endless lines, the slow movement of our carry-ons through the X-ray scanners.

The detection failures by the TSA are well-documented, but not much discussed.

What troubles me most is the sad workers, staring at their screens, hours on end. For what? Not only is it a miserable job, but, as mere mortals, they’re not very good at it.

Enter AI. If it can spot hard-to-detect tumors in lungs, I’m confident it can detect contraband in carry ons. And relieve humans of a thankless task that they’re ill-suited to handle.

By this account, the new TSA AI-aided screening program is underway.