AI在医学中正从预测转向干预,需建模生物系统对治疗的反应。
From Prediction to Intervention: The Evolution of AI in Biomedicine

- 区分观察型与干预型智能,提出疾病级模型显式描述生物动态与干预响应
- 现有预测系统无法模拟新疗法效果,因不包含扰动下的演化机制
- 适合关注临床决策支持、药物研发及个性化治疗的科研与医疗从业者
人工智能在生物医学领域通过大规模多模态数据融合,显著提升了临床结局预测与患者分层的准确性。然而,这些系统本质仍为观察性:它们从历史数据中学习统计关联,局限于已观测的生物与临床状态,难以泛化至新疗法或未观测干预。我们认为,生物医学中的AI正经历结构性转变——随着决策日益依赖对干预的推理而非对过往数据的外推,现有预测架构已显不足。基于历史数据的学习系统,其结构上无法表征生物系统在扰动下的演化路径,因此无法可靠支撑新型干预下的决策。本文提出概念框架,区分观察型与干预型智能,并定义疾病级模型为显式表达生物过程状态、动态与干预响应的系统。这类模型实现从推断到模拟的跃迁:不是基于过去预测可能结果,而是推理干预下的未来演变。这一转变也意味着价值创造点的转移——从数据处理与预测,转向支持并定义干预下的决策。由此可知,无法建模干预的系统将被结构性排除于临床决策之外。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
Artificial intelligence has advanced rapidly in biomedicine through large-scale multimodal data integration, enabling increasingly accurate prediction of clinical outcomes and patient stratification. These systems, however, remain fundamentally observational: they learn statistical associations from historical data and operate within previously observed biological and clinical states, limiting their ability to generalize to novel therapies or unobserved interventions. We argue that AI in biomedicine is undergoing a structural transition. As biomedical decision-making increasingly depends on reasoning about intervention rather than extrapolation from past observations, predictive architectures become structurally insufficient. Systems that learn from historical data cannot, by construction, represent how biological systems evolve under perturbation, and therefore cannot reliably support decision-making in the presence of novel interventions. We introduce a conceptual framework distinguishing observational and interventional intelligence and define disease-level models as systems that explicitly represent the state, dynamics, and intervention response of biological processes. These models enable a shift from inference to simulation -- reasoning about what will happen under intervention rather than what is likely based on the past. This transition also implies a shift in where value is created: from data processing and prediction toward systems that support and define decision-making under intervention. It follows directly from the structure of biomedical decision-making and defines the next stage of AI in medicine. Systems that cannot model intervention will be structurally excluded from decision-making.
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