If you give a computer enough photos and the right algorithm, it can learn to see. And if the photos show damaged eyes, the computer can learn to diagnose eye disease even better than humans can.Here's the JAMA article: "Development and Validation of a Deep Learning Algorithm for Detection of Diabetic Retinopathy in Retinal Fundus Photographs".
A lot of what human physicians do now will likely be performed by machines in the future. In particular, pattern-recognition diagnoses will be ripe for machine learning. As a radiologist, I don't expect my job will exist in its current form in 20 years. (Maybe not in 10!)
