Will Regulatory bodies – FDA, FAA, DMV – be more amenable to new technology?

[WakahiuNjenga]

Artificial Intelligence, and in particular deep learning, has come a long way to reach it's current level of performance. Deep learning has shown that computers can parse large volumes of data and, in the process, “learn” the salient features of images and find subtle patterns.

We are using similar A.I. Technology at a startup that I cofounded, http://behold.ai, to identify abnormalities in medical images thereby helping radiologists make better clinical decisions. However, we are faced with regulatory challenges with the FDA, although the algorithms have shown great promise. Basically the FDA is averse to the black-boxish nature of these algorithms where an image is input and then the neural network outputs an inference.

I know many other companies and research institutions such as IBM Watson are working hard at the technical aspects. Other startups and large companies such as Google with the self driving cars are faced with widespread regulatory issues. Is there any chance that startups currently working in this field will see commercial viability soon because of regulatory bodies being more amenable to their new technology?