AI news that drew views, Aug. 3–7

In the late 1700s the English social theorist Jeremy Bentham sketched out a prison in which a single guard could control hundreds of inmates. The trick was to let the men know they could be seen 24/7 while the guard on duty was hidden from their view.  

Medical journals accepting reprint fees are much more likely to publish articles written by authors who received industry payments.

Pandemic forecasting models aren’t hard to find of late, but a new one combines epidemiological expertise from a top-three medical school with AI knowhow from one of big tech’s biggest.

Medical AI may be stuck in a bind familiar to many jobseekers: If you don’t have the hands-on experience, you can’t get the job. If you don’t have the job, you can’t get the hands-on experience.

Healthcare AI watchers would be unwise to overlook dermatology, as it is a medical specialty “at the precipice of an artificial intelligence revolution.”

If it pans out at real-world dinner tables, a freshly cooked-up AI system will soon be counting calories and sniffing out macronutrients just by gobbling up images of meals.

Someone had to come right out and ask. Six researchers representing four medical specialties have done so, weighing the odds by reviewing a representative sample of the literature.

A generation gap may be emerging within the gold rush of computer scientists and software developers racing to weaponize AI for the fight against COVID-19.

A company with a name that sounds like a book title has formed to beat back COVID and future health crises by tapping the powers of AI.