Dear Readers, Here we have given Practice English Reading Comprehension quiz and questions for IBPS PO, IBPS Clerk, RRB, SSC & other competitive exams with detailed explanation. Candidates those who are preparing for IBPS PO/Clerk, SSC and other competitive exams can make use of it.
[WpProQuiz 756]
Direction (1-10): Read the passage below and answer the following questions.
Machines that see, hear, read, think and act! Does this sound like fantasy? The fact is that all these are not only possible but are also happening around you, albeit surreptitiously. Artificial intelligence (AI), defined as ability for machines to exhibit reasoning and learning similar to humans, is a reality today. Despite fears- some well-founded, some not- Al is on course to transform society and disrupt many spheres of human activity. Health care is one of the well-entrenched traditional domains that will be radically challenged by the advent of intelligent health systems a.k.a ‘Dr. Computer’. However, the ethical and emotional aspects of health care, founded upon the strong physician-patient relationship, will pose challenges.
Self-learning AI systems can efficiently learn any task where there are clear right-wrong answers or win-loss outcomes, as seen in ‘Jeopardy’ or chess. Here, computers outshine even the best humans. However, medicine is often ambiguous, which constrains self-learning and requires continued inputs from human experts. This has limited AI applications in health so far, except in specialised data-intensive areas such as medical oncology or imaging, where computers are starting to outperform humans in specific tasks. In the preceding year, we have seen computers reach dermatologist-level classification of skin cancer, ophthalmologist-level classification of retinopathy, and better than- radiologist detection of lung nodules or wrist fractures. Importantly, unlike humans, computers, once trained, can be easily scaled or duplicated. This promises to disrupt health care, bringing democratisation and accessibility to a system plagued with inequity.
So how long will AI be used in health? Digital assistants that perform repetitive tasks and provide clinical decision support are the low-hanging fruits of this sector. They save time and increase productivity for highly-skilled health care workers such as doctors, while also enabling less-skilled workers to undertake complex tasks. In rural settings, where direct access to experts is near-impossible, digital assistants could be actively used by trained workers for diagnosis and management of common diseases such as diabetes, hypertension and, asthma, among others. Even where doctors are available, passive suggestions from such assistants would lead to a reduction in errors. The greatest benefit of AI may be seen in situations that informationally overwhelm humans.
The ability of AI systems to tirelessly monitor large data streams and identify complex predictive patterns is invaluable in scenarios where patients are at risk of adverse events. This is a great tool to pre-empt medical catastrophes and saves lives. While these developments are set to revolutionise medicine, the mathematical predictors of risk, generated by AI, defy verbal summarisation, thus becoming progressively incomprehensible even to physicians. This trend will lead us to semi-autonomous AI systems that function with only technical oversight to identify obvious malfunction. In such situations, while the prescribing pen may remain with doctors, the invisible guiding hands will be computers.
This brings us to a question being whispered in medical circles. Are doctors on the way out, with radiologists and pathologists leading the way and surgeons bringing up the rear? I think not! Doctors will need to adapt to a new role, shedding unneeded skills while gaining new ones, but still having a major role to play. First, training and testing of AI for optimal health decision-making will require ongoing inputs and feed-back. Second, AI may never reach the flexible comprehension and curiosity of natural intelligence, meaning that human will still be at the forefront of medicine. Last, but not least, beyond cold competence, a key element to patient satisfaction and outcome is the warmth of the physician-patient relationship. Empathy, emotional care, judiciousness and responsibility are all human characteristics that would be difficult to replicate. Together, this ensures that there will always be a demand for doctors, perhaps with a shifted priority towards human qualities rather than technical ones. Man-machine synergy is what AI should bring t health care, the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.
Q1. Which of the following(s) can be correctly inferred from the passage?
This post was last modified on November 22, 2017 12:04 pm