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AI toilets will scan your poop to diagnose your ailments

Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra sees smart loos in our future and is anxious to sell the chips they will need.

Stephen Shankland Former Principal Writer
Stephen Shankland worked at CNET from 1998 to 2024 and wrote about processors, digital photography, AI, quantum computing, computer science, materials science, supercomputers, drones, browsers, 3D printing, USB, and new computing technology in general. He has a soft spot in his heart for standards groups and I/O interfaces. His first big scoop was about radioactive cat poop.
Expertise Processors, semiconductors, web browsers, quantum computing, supercomputers, AI, 3D printing, drones, computer science, physics, programming, materials science, USB, UWB, Android, digital photography, science. Credentials
  • Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.
Stephen Shankland
Micron Technology CEO Sanjay Mehrotra speaks at Techonomy 2018.

Micron Technology CEO Sanjay Mehrotra speaks at Techonomy 2018.

Stephen Shankland/CNET

AI that screens out spam and recognizes your mom's face is so 2017. Get ready for smart toilets that'll scan your poop using artificial intelligence to save you a trip to the doctor.

That's what Sanjay Mehrotra, chief executive of memory chipmaker Micron Technology, expects as AI spreads to yet another corner of our lives.

"Medicine is going toward precision medicine and precision health," Mehrotra said at the Techonomy 2018 conference in Half Moon Bay on the Pacific coastline south of San Francisco. "Imagine smart toilets in the future that will be analyzing human waste in real time every day. You don't need to be going to visit a physician every six months. If any sign of disease starts showing up, you'll be able to catch it much faster because of urine analysis and stool analysis."

Medicine already is being changed by AI, technology that uses human-inspired technology called neural networks to spot various types of patterns. AI systems, once trained on large quantities of carefully labeled real-world data, can do things like spot evidence of diabetes in retina imagery and process X-ray scans.

Mehrotra has a big interest in AI. It drives demand for his company's products in everything from handheld smartphones to massive data centers.