Alexa, Am I Dying?

- Matt Jancer

Artificial Intelligence is elbowing its way into the doctor’s office, and M.D.’s are nervous— especially since studies have found AI better than dermatologists at diagnosing skin cancer, and it boosts the fracture-diagnosing accuracy of doctors alone. It’s promising enough that the consulting firm Accenture predicts the value of AI technology will climb about 40 percent a year, turning into a SGD$8.9 billion industry by 2021.

Closer to home, people are a little more excited about AI’s role in medical care, by which they mean shouting into their living room’s voice-activated smart speaker, “Alexa, here’s what’s going on with me,” and receiving a competent response that tells them what’s wrong and what to do. I wondered how well the at-home AIs might do at that, so I decided to test them.

I gave a second-generation Amazon Echo Dot and a Google Home Mini a couple of medical scenarios to see if I could trust my life to either of them. (I didn’t use Siri, which is more like a voice-activated Google search.) I downloaded the WebMD and Mayo Clinic First Aid skills to the Echo Dot. Google Assistant can give answers directly, so the Home Mini didn’t need apps. These devices are pretty good at giving first-aid answers, so I skipped those and started in with some tougher stuff. Right off the bat, I could tell there were going to be problems.