“Over the past three years, babies have been conceived — and at least 20 of them have been born — through clinical trials that involve automation with little to no human intervention. The same algorithmic computer-vision software that helps autonomous vehicles spot objects on the road and finds signs of breast cancer in a mammogram can instantaneously detect the most robust swimmer among hundreds of thousands of flailing, corkscrewing sperm — each one a fraction of the width of a hair strand. It’s a capability that far exceeds any trained embryologist’s eye. A robotic arm can collect that sperm and mix the chemicals required for an egg to stay viable. And it can delicately and reproducibly fertilize an egg, initiating the moment of conception.
The most ambitious of these automation efforts is happening not in the tech capital of San Francisco, but in Mexico City, at a clinic in the upscale neighborhood of Polanco. There, infertile couples — most of whom live far away and couldn’t afford IVF anyway — are getting automated IVF free in exchange for putting their bodies and their hopes for a family in the robotic hands of an experimental system called Aura…
Investors are interested in these technologies for the same reasons the entire corporate world is racing to build AI: Automated systems, which combine robotic hardware and algorithmic software, don’t get tired. They see things the human eye can’t. They can, in theory, do the same work, or at least portions of it, far faster, more precisely and more reliably replicated than human beings can. That means improved results, lower costs and many more patients served.”
From Washington Post.