Imagine for a moment that you just need to go to sleep and be observant for one night to find out what diseases you might develop in the future. Seen this way, it can almost sound like the plot of a novel or a science fiction movie. However, it is a complete reality. Or at least that’s what a new recently published study claims.
As it could not be otherwise, it is artificial intelligence that, according to experts, makes it possible. At first glance, it may seem like a great feat for medicine, but, as is often the case with everything related to this technology, there may also be a «dark side.» That is, a less kind and inevitable part if this advance became common and ordinary.
AI makes it possible to detect diseases while you sleep, says a study
According to Stanford Medicine scientistsit only takes one night of sleep to discover early signs of health problems. Even when these threats did not become certainties until many years later. The prodigy, if it can be called such a thing, has been achieved thanks to an artificial intelligence system named SleepFM.
Its operation is, in general terms, very similar to those of popular chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude or Grok. That is, tools to generate text, images, videos and that kind of thing. Or in other words, it all started with massive training. In this case, with hundreds of thousands of hours of sleep data from around 65 thousand patients.
The data in question was obtained using sleep polygraphy, a clinical test that records multiple physiological signals during the night. For example brain activity, heart rate, breathing or movements. Thanks to this information, it is possible to predict problems such as a myocardial infarction, dementia, prostate or breast cancer, etc.
The study seems to reveal that dreams can contain a lot of hidden information about any individual. Experts even talk about knowing future mortality rates. Of course, they also highlight the importance that this technology could have in improving what is currently known as preventive medicine.
Get healthy or foresee the future?
There is no doubt that achieving early diagnoses would help in many cases, without going any further (as exemplified by those responsible for the research) complications related to pregnancy. However, this progression could also be interpreted in another way: as the ability to see the future. That is to say, when and how we are going to get sick before we do.
Depending on the perspective used, there are many who think that discovering the potential diseases that one may have in the future would be almost more of a «condemnation» than a help. And, for most mortals, seeing the future would not be a very happy idea. AI, it seems, already allows this to some extent.