AI’s Growing Role in the Fight Against Alzheimer’s
post by BU-SHARP Writing Fellow Lindsay Griesman
From decoding DNA to designing drugs, artificial intelligence is changing both how fast Alzheimer’s discoveries happen and how scientists make them.
For decades, scavenging human DNA for markers of Alzheimer’s has been like reading a book one letter at a time. Researchers at USC are now using a “genomic language model” that can detect subtler influences across thousands of genes at once, which could guide new drugs aimed at preventing or treating the disease. Paul Thompson, director of the ENIGMA Consortium, compares AI to a “new telescope to survey the universe” (Levin, 2026)
That shift reflects a broader trend. The use of AI in medical diagnostics has grown significantly from image analysis to treatment planning to drug development and disease prediction (Zhang et al.). It is a fast moving field in dementia research.
Listening for early warning signs
Some of the most promising work is happening here at Boston University. In 2024, BU researchers developed an easy-to-use AI tool that identifies people with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) who are likely to develop Alzheimer’s disease within six years. The model works from speech instead of relying on scans or lab tests. The team used recorded neuropsychological test interviews from the Framingham Heart Study, transcribed them with automated speech recognition, and trained models to predict who would develop the disease. The model analyzes what people say, such as word choice and sentence structure, rather than how they say it, such as enunciation or speed.
The results were encouraging. The best models, which combined speech-derived features with age, sex, and education level, reached 78.5% accuracy and 81.1% sensitivity in predicting MCI-to-Alzheimer’s progression within six years. In an interview with Andrew Thurston, Ioannis Paschalidis, lead researcher and director of BU’s Hariri Institute for Computing, says that early detection gives scientists more opportunities to study the disease and its progression. They also highlight the practicality of a development like this: a fully automated procedure could become an inexpensive and widely accessible screening tool that supports remote assessment.
Care and Prevention
Outside the lab, Alzheimer’s Society says AI will never replace person-to-person care but could help people with dementia live at home longer. Vanderbilt’s Timothy Hohman adds that apps and wearables could track modifiable risk factors like hearing loss, cardiovascular health, and sleep.
A tool, not a shortcut
Experts stress that human judgment still matters. Hohman warns that biased training data produced biased models, which could worsen health disparities. Ultimately, although an incredibly innovative tool, AI cannot fully replace the training, expertise, and experience of healthcare professionals, but this marks a major step forward in the journey to end Alzheimer’s.