AI meet LI, Living Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has swept into the healthcare industry. It interfaces with patients to schedule their next doctors' appointments or teeth cleanings. It sends follow-up notes to check on patients after surgery. It selects appropriate claims processing codes that home healthcare providers need to get properly reimbursed. It summarized medical notes after patient visits. These are a few of the administrative tasks that AI already performs. AI also performs more advanced tasks such as reading x-ray scans and making preliminary diagnoses. But AI can, and will, do more - with a little help from some friends. Combining AI with the converging technologies of advanced sensors and biotechnology will transform today's AI into tomorrow's LI - Living Intelligence.

Amy Webb is the author of the Harvard Business Review article, "Why 'Living Intelligence' is the Next Big Thing." Professor Webb is a quantitative futurist, CEO of Future Today Institute and professor of strategic foresight at the New York University Stern School of Business. Professor Webb applauses the companies (particularly healthcare companies) that have invested millions of dollars to advance AI in their profession and practices. However, she warns that focusing on AI alone will leave these companies behinds as other emerging technologies are enabling AI to do more. She calls the use of AI and these emerging technologies the "Living Intelligence," LI. Professor Webb observes and predicts these things:

• AI needs data. Much of that data will come from advanced sensors and a network of interconnected devices. These sensors and devices will facilitate and fuel the advancement of AI. One example is a nanobot that can monitor patient health in real time after being injected into the bloodstream.

• As more sensors surround us, they will capture and transmit not just more data, but more types of data. As Large Language Models (e.g., AI) predict what is next, Large Action Models (e.g., LI) predict what should be done next.

• Paired with AI, bioengineering can create "generative biology" which uses data, computation, and AI to predict or create new biological components such as proteins, genes, and the like. For example, generative algorithms help engineer enzymes that break down complex molecules, such as plastics and other pollutants.

• Signs of convergence in living intelligence technologies is happening most intensively in pharmaceuticals, medical products, health care, space, construction and engineering, consumer packaged goods, and agriculture.

Professor Webb makes five specific recommendations to leadership teams. Read them here in the Harvard Business Review (subscription required)