“You may have lung cancer. Please consult a doctor”. This message could become reality in the future if a bot monitored your search history.
Research from Microsoft published Thursday in the journal JAMA Oncology reports that lung cancer could be detected a year earlier in more than a third of cases if a bot analyzed a patient's Internet searches combined with the demographics of the area they live in.
Using Microsoft's Bing search engine, Microsoft researchers Ryen White and Eric Horvitz identified users by asking questions like "Just diagnosed with lung cancer," and then worked through the search history of those users. The scientists found that these users had previously searched for symptoms related to lung cancer, such as bronchitis or chest pain. As well as various aggravating conditions like smoking or exposure to radon gas that were inferred from location data and other search terms.
Naturally, this particular symptomatology always includes the false diagnosis, but nevertheless it had a success rate of 39%. Given that regarding lung cancer the patient often comes to the doctor when already at a terminal stage, this pre-diagnosis could prove extremely important.
Of course, for our malicious readers it could be a tool for commercial use, if it were exploited by a company specializing in medical equipment or pharmaceuticals that would search the internet for its future customers. Or it could be exploited by a company selling children's products if it found users searching for, for example “how to get pregnant”. The sure thing is that search engines already monitor every one of our actions, so it would be in our interest to reap some benefits from this.
