2.3 million…
That’s how many women develop breast cancer every year, according to the World Health Organization.
That’s roughly the population of Houston, Texas. And it makes breast cancer the most common form of cancer.
That’s why screening is so important. It stops people dying of the disease by detecting it at an earlier, more treatable stage.
And doctors have a new weapon in the fight against breast cancer – artificial intelligence (“AI”).
AI screening is as good as two radiologists working together…
That’s according to preliminary results from a study published in the journal Lancet Oncology.
Even better, using AI to detect early signs of the disease is less likely to yield a false positive. That’s when a scan leads to a misdiagnosis of cancer in a healthy patient.
The study involved more than 80,000 women. In total, 244 women recalled from AI-supported screening were found to have cancer. That compares with 203 women from standard screening.
In other words, the AI system detected 41 cases of early-stage breast cancer the human doctors missed.
That’s 41 women who now have a much better chance of beating the disease thanks to “thinking machines.”
I put the rise of AI on your radar four years ago…
That’s long before the release of popular AI chatbot ChatGPT… and the Wall Street mania in AI stocks.
In your April 10, 2019, dispatch, I called it the “most disruptive technology of our age” and the “kind of megatrend that gushes profits for decades.”
As I wrote…
Over the next decade or so, advances in AI will bring such fundamental changes to our lives they’ll dwarf all the technological progress we’ve seen in our lifetimes.
I even passed on a recommendation from the team to buy high-performance chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD).
Since then, AMD is up 322%. That compares with a 78% gain for the tech-heavy Nasdaq.
If you’re a longtime reader, I hope you paid attention. That’s a roughly 4X outperformance.
But don’t worry if you missed out.
The AI megatrend is just getting started. It will deliver market-beating returns over the next four years and beyond.
AI is about a lot more than just ChatGPT…
It and other generative AI systems have caught the public’s imagination.
And for good reason…
They can write resumes, explain complex topics, pass exams, translate languages, and write essays on just about any topic.
Generative AIs can also create high-quality images and videos based on simple text prompts.
But as impressive as all that is, it’s still only one application of AI.
AIs excel at crunching through vast amounts of data. This allows them to figure out patterns that predict certain outcomes. And it gives them a superhuman ability to solve the problems humans struggle with…
Back to what I wrote in that April 2019 dispatch…
AI could help us figure out how to create nuclear fusion. This would give us an unlimited zero-carbon, non-combustion energy source… and radically transform the energy industry.
An AI could also help us feed the world’s growing population. From detecting pests on crops… to figuring out what crops will deliver the best yields… to predicting the exact moment of ripeness for fruits and vegetables… AI algorithms are also going to change farming for good.
AIs will also be able to help improve schooling. For instance, they’ll be able to do the tedious task of grading, freeing up human teachers to spend more time with students.
In short, AI will create an era of innovation like nothing humanity has ever experienced.
And this is no longer in the realm of predictions. It’s a trend already in motion.
AI has already solved one of the biggest challenges in biology…
In 2020, Google’s AI division, DeepMind, launched AlphaFold.
It’s an AI system that uses machine learning to solve the so-called protein-folding problem.
Without getting too far into the weeds, proteins are described by their amino acid sequence. But in our bodies, they scrunch up into a 3D shape. And this shape determines what the protein does in the body.
Proteins are critical for how your body operates. They do most of the work in your cells. And they’re necessary for the structure and function of just about everything from your muscles and organs to your hormones and immune system.
Predicting the 3D shapes of proteins is essential for drug and vaccine development. It’s also key to curing diseases. Misfolded proteins can lead to diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.
But the number of possible shapes a protein can adopt is astronomically large.
This makes predicting a protein’s final 3D shape from its amino acid sequence an extremely difficult task.
Human biologists have made only modest progress…
In about 50 years of human endeavor from all the labs around the world, they’ve managed to find the structure of about 100,000 proteins.
But this is just a small fraction of the 200 million proteins known to science.
And it’s easy to understand why…
It typically takes a PhD candidate the full length of a four- to five-year PhD program to figure out the shape of a single protein.
But AlphaFold can fold an average-length protein in seconds.
This allowed it, in 2021, to fold all 200 million proteins in a single year.
It then put that out a free-access database that researches from all over the world can use.
And they’re using it in all sorts of interesting ways, including to…
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Create a novel malaria vaccine that focuses on curbing transmission of the disease
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Combat antibiotic resistance
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Develop medicine to treat Chagas disease, which is spread by a parasite and is common in Central and South America
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Shed light on ways to slow the progression of neurological diseases like Parkinson’s
Getting a computer to write your resume for you is a timesaver. And it’s cool to use AI to create images and videos based on text prompts.
But these are parlor games compared with curing diseases and unlocking the secrets of biology.
We’ll look at other applications of AI in tomorrow’s dispatch…
I’ll be bringing you insights from our tech investing expert, Colin Tedard.
Since joined the Legacy Research team in June, he’s made it his mission to help folks profit from this megatrend.
And lately, he’s been focusing on the impact of AI on the movie business… as well as on fraud detection.
I’ll also have more for you on why AMD, the chipmaker I put on your radar four years ago, is still a great way to get exposure to this trend.
So make sure to look out for that in your inbox at the usual time of 5 p.m. ET tomorrow.
Finally, make sure to tune in to secure a seat at our upcoming AI event…
Colleague Teeka Tiwari was voted the world’s “most trusted crypto expert” by 130,000 independent analysts.
He’s the former Wall Street executive who heads up our Palm Beach Research Group advisory, where his readers have had the chance to close out gains of 11,004%… 14,926%… even 37,573%.
Teeka has been looking for ways to profit from the AI revolution. And he’s found an AI coin trading for cents that he says has at least 100x more upside potential than popular stocks like Nvidia.
He’ll reveal all the details on Wednesday, August 9, at 8 p.m. ET, giving you a shot at generational wealth.
If you’re interested in exploring ways to profit from AI… and how blockchain technology can help AI innovation move even faster… you won’t want to miss it.
Regards,
Chris Lowe
Editor, The Daily Cut