AI Versus the Coronavirus (nytimes.com) 44
A new consortium of top scientists will be able to use some of the world's most advanced supercomputers to look for solutions. From a report: Advanced computers have defeated chess masters and learned how to pick through mountains of data to recognize faces and voices. Now, a billionaire developer of software and artificial intelligence is teaming up with top universities and companies to see if A.I. can help curb the current and future pandemics. Thomas M. Siebel, founder and chief executive of C3.ai, an artificial intelligence company in Redwood City, Calif., said the public-private consortium would spend $367 million in its initial five years, aiming its first awards at finding ways to slow the new coronavirus that is sweeping the globe. "I cannot imagine a more important use of A.I.," Mr. Siebel said in an interview.
Known as the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute, the new research consortium includes commitments from Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California, the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago, as well as C3.ai and Microsoft. It seeks to put top scientists onto gargantuan social problems with the help of A.I. -- its first challenge being the pandemic. The new institute will seek new ways of slowing the pathogen's spread, speeding the development of medical treatments, designing and repurposing drugs, planning clinical trials, predicting the disease's evolution, judging the value of interventions, improving public health strategies and finding better ways in the future to fight infectious outbreaks.
Known as the C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute, the new research consortium includes commitments from Princeton, Carnegie Mellon, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California, the University of Illinois and the University of Chicago, as well as C3.ai and Microsoft. It seeks to put top scientists onto gargantuan social problems with the help of A.I. -- its first challenge being the pandemic. The new institute will seek new ways of slowing the pathogen's spread, speeding the development of medical treatments, designing and repurposing drugs, planning clinical trials, predicting the disease's evolution, judging the value of interventions, improving public health strategies and finding better ways in the future to fight infectious outbreaks.
Riding on the bandwagon or pulling the hay wagon? (Score:2)
If that flat earth rocket guy was still alive, he'd be in the news for launching himself to help with the coronavirus.
I know let's try AI (Score:2)
Grump: well you could try AI, but then you'd just have 2 problems. Have you tried using Perl? Rust? maybe that will help. Rust is supposed to be safer.
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It's only safer because Rust runs in real time. Because Rust never sleeps.
Hey Hey my my (Score:2)
Cobol will never die
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Yeah, I know a guy who is probably trying to use Regular Expressions to handle the coronavirus.
5 years? (Score:2)
367 million over the next 5 years? If this goes on for 5 years we're all hosed.
Perhaps a AI driven early warning system instead, the next one will be just as bad if not worse.
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We don't even need that. We just need sane border controls.
#1. Borders open for travel as usual until...
#2. People traveling from a country with any kind of epidemic they are quarantined in a designated hotel for 2 weeks or however long said contagion is active. Their income supplemented and job protected until they can return.
#3. Anyone traveling to a country with any kind of epidemic they are forced to remain there without option to return until epidemic is completed.
#4. Anyone that is identified a
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" a complete market failure to take precaution"
Eh? Markets are ill-equipped to handle epidemics. They need to see a profit in there somewhere to shift resources. This is one reason the current effort will be lost in few years. Government stockpiling for possible epidemics will seem like they are building piggy banks that pols will raid. It will come in the form of: well, we could spend x on ventilators, etc, or we could piss it off shining our ass for the next election.
And we need to build research infrastr
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You were okay until...
"because at least one political party doesn't believe in science."
This is bullshit. They don't believe in some of your conclusions is not the same as not believing in science itself. This is why people vote in assholes like Trump because folks like you are so fucking dumb you run a bitch like Hillary.
They believe in Science plenty, that has nothing to do with whether or not they accept your "conclusions" to scientific evidence. The main problem is that in your mind, republicans are
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Your ilk makes me appreciate social distancing.
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Gov sets out what it needs, the numbers and cost.
The private sector bids for that and makes what it said it would.
Re 'Government stockpiling for possible epidemics will seem like they are building piggy banks that pols will raid."
Works for Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore.
Re 'research infrastructure" That does not always work as Communist China hid wuflu from the world.
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Our govt supposedly did "vast" stockpile in multiple depots recently, so they need to explain what happened. https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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Oops, wrong time thingy, correct:
https://youtu.be/QwvUvqSilA0?t... [youtu.be]
Re: 5 years? (Score:2)
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sounds Spartan but actually a politician in Holland has proposed something similar and im not gonna bet
Oh puleeze! (Score:1)
The AI can help us humans researching it sure, but in a competition??? don't make me laugh...
AI can beat humans in chess because the rules possible moves are finite. Viruses can change the rules when they mutate... sure even then there is some finite going on, but in comparison to Chess, the rules are exponentially vast.
Put AI up against a human that can change the rules of Chess on the fly like viruses can and see how well AI does after that.
The reasons vaccines work is because we give our bodies the inva
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A virus's genome is finite.
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Did I claim otherwise? I said it is vast by comparison to the finite rules and moves of chess.
And remember, each time a virus's RNA comes into contact with another hosts DNA there is a risk of mutation because of environmental factors and of course the how the host's body behaves with the invader.
This makes for an unknown outcome which makes the genome a lot more problematic to deal with. Currently our most advanced AI's are really weak sauce algorithms being paraded around like they are AI. They are not
hitler AI says put all sick into an camp (Score:1)
hitler AI says put all sick into an camp
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hitler AI says put all sick into an camp
Trump AI says it's just a cold. No action required.
Ask the right AI (Score:2)
Not Samaritan!
It's not that fucking hard (Score:2)
If everyone just agrees to stay inside for 14 days, the coronoavirus will die out. It'd be cheap and easy to accomplish. But assholes are making things worse by continuing to spread it around.
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Errrm....except for the emergencies that require hospitalization, or the food in your pantry not going to last 14 days (assuming 14 days is even enough), or keeping the utilities functioning, or keeping the criminals from wandering the streets, or keeping the clueless from wandering the streets, or keeping Ma and Pa Kettle from believing it is all a hoax.
So yeah, it's not that fucking hard. Neither is me acquiring a pink unicorn.
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No, a percentage of the people inside would develop the infection over a period of 1 - 14 days (average 5 days, and as long as 14), then when your 14 days are up everyone would go out, including the still contagious, and we'd have a replay of the the last two months.
But thanks for playing, maybe next time.
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Okay, so 30 days. I may have the timeline wrong, but figuring out how long should be someone else's job. Either way, it seems fine.
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You cannot stay with me, but I give a lot of money to a large agency to handle things like that. Normally they fuck you over, but maybe now they could get off their ass and do something.
I certainly think dropping off food for free makes sense. But you can stay in place whereever you happen to live. You sleep somewhere.
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No researcher is stupid enough to take an AI designed vaccine and administer it widely without testing.
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Reminds me of this:
"When they simulated actual convoys from the second world war they found that the software achieved fewer losses and faster travel times than had actually happened. When they examined the results they realised that in each case the software had dispatched a destroyer to sink the slowest merchant ship, the vessel that had held the convoy back. The logic was faultless, potentially saving more ships and their crews, but is not something that most human commanders would contemplate."
Alternate Qs (Score:2)
I suppose that's better than the old place seeking old ways of increasing the pathogen's spread, like proponents of herd immunity by eponymously named pos
WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong (Score:2)
Asking Skynet how to save the human race.
Ways of slowing the pathogen's spread (Score:1)
Dont do what Italy, France and Spain did.
Track the sick, stop the tourists and stop global education travel.
Find out who is sick and who had contact with the sick.
Test. Track the sick. Test more. Make your own nations test. Test your nations test before use...
Look after your nations own citizens.
Stop ships full of sick people from letting sick people enter your nation.
Dont let your navy allow crew to spends days in nations with wuflu.
Have a civilian stockpile
Well... (Score:1)
AI (Score:2)