Not necessarily related, but an interesting idea. Kind of a follow up to our organ printing a post a while back.

Can computers make life or death decisions? Researchers say that a simple mathematical formula could predict how people would want to be treated in dire medical situations as accurately as their loved ones could. Findings say that computers could help doctors by acting as surrogate decision-makers to better estimate the wishes of people in a coma.

This begs the question, how well can human surrogates predict what the patient’s wishes might be? According to the article, a review of 16 studies found that surrogates got it right only 68% of the time. Can a computer do any better?

Researchers think so. By analyzing data from the general US population about attitudes towards medical researchers believe they can create an algorithm to replace the human surrogate. Their analysis suggested that most people want life-saving treatment if there is at least a 1% chance that following the intervention they would have the ability to reason, remember and communicate. If there is less than a 1% chance, people generally say they would choose not to have the treatment. The researchers then put their own work to the test and found that their computer surrogates predicted the patient’s wishes more accurately — 78% of the time.

Think about this for a minute. Should computers be allowed to do something like this? Mr. Orwell says let the debate begin!

(Source: newscientiest.com)