On Monday, Microsoft announced it had created an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that is better at medical diagnoses than doctors.
Dr. Spock, where are you?
The newly unveiled Microsoft AI Diagnostic Orchestrator (MAI-DxO) outperformed 21 physicians from the United States and the United Kingdom in complex cases documented in the New England Journal of Medicine, achieving the correct diagnosis 85.5 percent of the time, compared to 20 percent for the doctors.
CONTROL THE AUDIO BY PUSHING BUTTON BELOW
Now, are we at the stage where, like TV’s Dr. Spock, you can wave a magic wand over a person’s body to come up with a quick diagnosis? No, but with a stretch of one’s imagination, it certainly seems possible sometime in the future.
“We’re taking a big step towards medical superintelligence,” said Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, in a LinkedIn post. MAI-DxO is not yet available for clinical use, however.
The tool is employed in tandem with well-known AI models, including GPT, Llama, Claude, Gemini, Grok and DeepSeek.
Microsoft, in making the announcement, noted that the tool is not meant to replace physicians but to assist them.