AS if artificial intelligence (AI) wasn't already scary enough, apparently it can now tell you whether you will develop cancer in the next 20 years - with startling accuracy.
Experts from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), the German Cancer Research Centre and the University of Copenhagen have developed a new generative AI tool that can predict people's risk of more than 1,000 diseases, including cancer.
Named Delphi-2M, the model has been trained to find patterns in anonymous medical records, looking for medical events in a patient's history alongside lifestyle factors such as smoking, alcohol consumption and being overweight, to predict what might happen up to 20 years into the future.
Researchers hope the tool can be used to prevent disease years ahead of time.
"Medical events often follow predictable patterns," wrote Tomas Fitzgerald, an expert in molecular biology and study co-author, in the journal Nature.
"Our AI model learns those patterns and can forecast future health outcomes."
Professor Ewan Birney, Executive Director of EMBL, added: "You walk into the doctor's surgery and the clinician is very used to using these tools, and they're able to say 'here are four major risks that are in your future and here's two things you could do to really change that'."
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