Day six of The Yuan’s voyage of intelligent discovery makes landfall at Massachusetts Bay. Boston was founded in 1630 by Puritan settlers fleeing religious persecution in England and named for a town in the east of the mother country from which many hailed. The Pilgrim Fathers hoped to create a ‘city on a hill’ - a radiant model of a godly society for the world. They saw their flight as a fight between good and evil. ‘Good AI’ may one day ally with humanity to combat ‘evil AI,’ in the view of David H. Freedman, an award-winning science journalist covering health and technology, contributor to Scientific American and Forbes, and author of a book on AI, who calls into question the very assumptions underpinning a time when AI outwits humans.

When it comes to AI in the fields of medicine and healthcare, the focus is often on the advancements and improvements that it has enabled, but just as crucial are the mistakes that occur due to flawed or limited AI. Rectifying such errors could help save the lives of millions, thus rendering it a crucially important task.

Big Tech may be ready to deliver artificial intelligence-driven healthcare, but guarantees are lacking that this will go well. Would it be better to integrate AI into the existing system or to try introducing something completely new? Award-winning science journalist David H. Freedman takes a closer look at Big Tech’s plans for healthcare.

In the past few years virtual reality has made a huge leap forward, thanks to the latest state-of-the-art technology. David H Freedman discusses the rise of VR and its increasing role alongside artificial intelligence to deliver significant improvements in healthcare.

US-based hospital network Kaiser Permanente unveiled an experimental AI system two years ago that can do a better job than psychiatrists and therapists at predicting which patients are most at risk of a suicide attempt within three months. This was a ground-breaking discovery but the big challenge in the field still remains the same: getting access to far more data than is currently accessible to most AI projects.