Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Will 'Solve' Cancer Within The Next 10 Years By Treating It Like A Computer Virus, Says Company (independent.co.uk)
Microsoft is serious about finding a cure for cancer. In June, Microsoft researchers published a paper that shows how analyzing online activities can provide clues as to a person's chances of having cancer. They were able to identify internet users who had pancreatic cancer even before they'd been diagnosed, all from analyzing web query logs. Several months later, researchers on behalf of the company now say they will "solve" cancer within the next 10 years by treating it like a computer virus that invades and corrupts the body's cells. The goal is to monitor the bad cells and potentially reprogram them to be healthy again. The Independent reports: The company has built a "biological computation" unit that says its ultimate aim is to make cells into living computers. As such, they could be programmed and reprogrammed to treat any diseases, such as cancer. In the nearer term, the unit is using advanced computing research to try and set computers to work learning about drugs and diseases and suggesting new treatments to help cancer patients. The team hopes to be able to use machine learning technologies -- computers that can think and learn like humans -- to read through the huge amounts of cancer research and come to understand the disease and the drugs that treat it. At the moment, so much cancer research is published that it is impossible for any doctor to read it all. But since computers can read and understand so much more quickly, the systems will be able to read through all of the research and then put that to work on specific people's situations. It does that by bringing together biology, math and computing. Microsoft says the solution could be with us within the next five or ten years.
If there's one thing Microsoft has comprehensively and irrefutably established over the last 35 years of their existence, it's that they haven't the faintest clue how to identify or eradicate viruses.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
... machine learning is the solution. And cancer is not "like a computer virus that invades and corrupts the body's cells". That is how an actual virus works, hence the analogy by which the "computer virus" term came to be. Cancer is more like when a bit randomly flips in RAM and then by pure coincidence this causes a memory leak within an infinite loop that spreads shit all over the place until everything comes crashing down.
What could possibly go wrong? After all, it's proven totally trivial to eradicate bugs in software(that's why nobody uses systems that haven't been formally verified; it's such an easy step that you'd be crazy to skip it!); so it should be easy enough to extend our victories in that field to vastly more complex biological systems that lack many of the convenient mathematical properties built into the abstractions we use for computing.
Seriously guys; I'm glad you care about curing cancer and all; but what flavor of insanity drives this level of optimism about your chances?
Researcher Translation.
https://xkcd.com/678/
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
In 2004 Bill claimed SPAM would be eradicated in 2 years. http://www.informationweek.com/spam-will-be-solved-in-2-years--gates/d/d-id/1022817?
That went very well....
2026: Microsoft is widely blamed for unleashing the vampiric zombie cancer plague that has wiped out most of humanity.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
If we can solve the problem of cancer within 10 years by treating it as a computer virus, why not treat gravity as a computer virus and come up with practical, cheap antigravity? Or that pesky light-speed limit, we need to beat that, and 10 years sounds about right
Bruce Perens.
And it's surprisingly simple. And they need it, because they have so many more cells than people do they would have a high risk of cancer without some sort of defense.
http://www.nature.com/news/how...
To summarize the contents of the link, elephants just have 20 copies of the p53 gene. To incite cancer, all the copies would have to be disabled, via the most common cancer generating mutation mechanism.
If you want to engineer people to be cancer resistant, it might be as simple as introducing more copies of the p53 gene into our genome.
2026: Microsoft is widely blamed for unleashing the vampiric zombie cancer plague that has wiped out most of humanity.
microsoft gets defeated in 2030 by an army led by general protection fault.
we have no records dated after that.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Not at all. Cancerous and pre-cancerous cells arise in the body all the time. It's the body's ability to eliminate such cells that protects you from cancer, but sometimes those mechanisms fail.
"Have you tried dying and being reincarnated?"
-- Tech Support
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Am I the only one who is scared about the fact that these clueless fuckwits have enough data on us to diagnose which of us has prostate cancer?
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Am I the only one who is scared about the fact that these clueless fuckwits have enough data on us to diagnose which of us has prostate cancer?
Diagnosing that someone has prostate cancer because they've googled "symptoms of prostate cancer" isn't rocket surgery.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it