Future of Radiology : What will happen with Artificial intelligence in place?

With my background of teaching Radiology to medical students many of them to come to me ask about future prospects of the subject and often I am very optimistic about my specialty. This is the first year when someone actually directly asked me this question, student in question was thinking about whether to join radiology residency or not.

Question: Thoughts on future of Radiodiagnosis w.r.t latest Deep Learning advances with Google and IBM AND sharp fall in CT, MRI costs. What will be job prospects in 5-10 years for radiologists? Is it a smart choice?

My Answer:  Every time a new technology comes it is seen as a threat but usually it ends up being an intelligent tool and improves the way we work. It will most likely evolve as an aid and radiologist will end up doing finer and more cerebral works. AI will affect entire medicine one day not just radiology that is just a beginning. You can actually look at it as an opportunity as radiology will become in years to come a great AI assisted specialty. But even that might be years away.

Radiologists were first in Medicine to use computers, first to use telemedicine, 3D reconstructions now 3D printing, and we will be first in AI space as well. The talk of Machine replacing humans has been there since long because of our love of science fiction, but what actually happens humans take more and more creative roles and machines take over repetitive roles. Think of future with positivism and don't shy away from technology. That is the future. 

Future is more about deeper AI - Man collaboration. Driver-less cars are more of a reality as of now than Doctors.  Buzz around Radiology as of now is because we are digital data. I know start ups in he field of pathology and deep learning. And I am sure it will affect all medical specialties.  They will assist you to help the patient better. That's the entire thing about technology.