Canadian medical researchers trained artificial intelligence to accurately predict type 2 diabetes within just six to 10 seconds of hearing a patient's spoken voice.
Working with faculty at Ontario Tech University in Canada, Klick Labs scientists trained the AI using recordings from 267 people recruited from India.
Participants were asked to record a phrase on their mobile phones six times a day for two weeks.
From 18,000 individual recordings, the scientists focused on 14 vocal features in search of consistent, replicable differences between groups with and without type 2 diabetes.
Four of these audio features proved to be the most useful in accurately predicting who has diabetes and who does not.
The AI focused on a range of vocal characteristics, including subtle changes in pitch and intensity, and linked that data to basic health information, including the patient's age, gender, height and weight.
The researchers found that gender proved to be a decisive factor: AI was able to diagnose the disease with an accuracy of 89% in women, but with a slightly lower accuracy for men, reaching 86%.
“Our research highlights significant vocal differences between individuals with and without type 2 diabetes,” said Jaycee Kaufman, the paper's first author and a research scientist at Klick Labs, which plans to commercialize the program.
In the past, expensive personal diagnostic tests, including a blood test, were needed to screen for prediabetes and type 2 diabetes.
Among the most common tests used are the glycated hemoglobin (A1C) test, the fasting blood glucose (FBG) test, and the oral glucose tolerance tests (OGTT).
“Current detection methods can be time and cost intensive,” Kaufman noted in a statement accompanying the new study, published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings Digital Health . “Acoustic technology has the potential to completely remove these barriers.”
Walking pace may predict whether you will die early or not!
Experts recommend walking 10,000 steps a day to maintain general health, but a recent study indicates that the pace of walking may be more important than the number of steps.
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A study reveals the genetic changes that gave humans the ability to walk upright
The study says that those who practice brisk walking, where the walking speed exceeds 6 km per hour, are less likely to die from cancer or have a heart attack. While walking slowly may mean you are more at risk of premature death.
Researchers from the University of Leicester found that people were more likely to die from heart attacks, cancer or other causes within 10 years if they walked at a slower pace.
Dr Jonathan Goldney, from the University of Leicester, said: “We encourage walkers to increase their pace wherever possible, as this may just improve their life expectancy. There are also many other benefits to physical activity, as previous research has shown. Doctors should too "They should consider asking their patients how fast they walk, as it turns out this can tell them a lot about their risk of death, which may guide the use of strategies to prevent premature death and disease."
Previous research has shown that the more you walk, the lower your risk of death, even if you walk fewer than 5,000 steps a day.
Researchers from the University of Leicester monitored 391,652 people, aged between 38 and 73, included in the UK Biobank.
Participants reported their walking pace as “slow” (below 4 km/h), “steady/moderate” (4-6 km/h) or “fast” (above 6 km/h).
Only 6.6% said they walked slowly, while 52.6% reported moderate walking, and 40.8% reported walking at a fast pace.
Participants were followed for an average of 13 years, and 22,000 deaths were recorded during this period.
The results showed that women who walked at a fast pace were 26% less likely to die from cancer, and men faced a 29% lower risk, compared to those who walked slowly.
The fast-paced women experienced a 60% reduction in the risk of death from cardiovascular disease. As for men, the percentage reached 62%.
The researchers found that the probability of premature death in both sexes from other causes, such as dementia and respiratory diseases, decreases by 71% when walking quickly, according to the data.
Research only proves a relationship, not cause and effect.
Russian analyst: Artificial intelligence developers may compete with the world's leading intelligence
Russian analyst Sergei Denisentsev said that artificial intelligence developers will compete with the world's leading intelligence services in the future.
In the near future, new elements may be added to the confrontation between the world's traditional intelligence services, namely intelligence services and private military companies affiliated with non-governmental institutions that work to develop artificial intelligence.
This was stated in the article “Prospects for the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Intelligence Work” by Russian analyst Sergei Denisentsev.
The article was published in the first issue of “The Hidden Dimension” magazine, a Russian analytical publication specializing in studying intelligence services in countries around the world, including the American Central Intelligence Agency, the British “Mi6”, the Israeli Mossad and others.
Sergey Denisentsev noted in his article: “Perhaps the concept of replacing nation-states with large corporations operating outside national borders, as major actors in global politics, which is very popular among futurists, will become a reality thanks to the technological superiority of these companies in the field of artificial intelligence.” "As a key area of the global economy in the 21st century. Then new actors will join the confrontation between state intelligence in the form of intelligence services and private military companies of non-national institutions supported by the power of artificial intelligence."
In this context, the analyst recalled that the announcement of Google's new Gemini AI model for artificial intelligence, which was said to be five times superior to the famous GPT-4 in its computing capabilities, became in early September 2023 a major topic of discussion among specialists and researchers in the field of artificial intelligence.
“The fact that systems of this level are now being created exclusively by private companies has once again intensified the debate about non-governmental institutions that will soon achieve sustainable technological superiority over national agencies (including intelligence agencies),” the article stated.
Denisentsev emphasized that strategic intelligence has always been one of the pinnacles of intellectual activity at the level of research work and knowledge in the scientific sense. It is no coincidence that the word Intelligence in English is translated into Russian as "mind, mental talent, or intelligence." But intelligence can not only be natural and human, but also artificial in the sense of machine and software intelligence.
He added, "It is no coincidence that the first attempts to create artificial intelligence were in most cases dictated by the requirements of the intelligence services of the world's leading countries."
The analyst also quoted Google CEO Sundar Pichai as saying: “Artificial intelligence is one of the most important things humanity is developing. It is more important than developing electricity or fire.”