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Machine Learning Spots Treasure Trove of Elusive Viruses (nature.com)
Artificial intelligence could speed up metagenomic studies that look for species unknown to science. From a report: Researchers have used artificial intelligence (AI) to discover nearly 6,000 previously unknown species of virus. The work illustrates an emerging tool for exploring the enormous, largely unknown diversity of viruses on Earth. Although viruses influence everything from human health to the degradation of trash, they are hard to study. Scientists cannot grow most viruses in the lab, and attempts to identify their genetic sequences are often thwarted because their genomes are tiny and evolve fast.
For the latest study, Simon Roux, a computational biologist at the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI) in Walnut Creek, California, trained computers to identify the genetic sequences of viruses from one unusual family, Inoviridae. These viruses live in bacteria and alter their host's behaviour: for instance, they make the bacteria that cause cholera, Vibrio cholerae, more toxic. But Roux, who presented his work at the meeting in San Francisco, California, organized by the JGI, estimates that fewer than 100 species had been identified before his research began. Roux presented a machine-learning algorithm with two sets of data -- one containing 805 genomic sequences from known Inoviridae, and another with about 2,000 sequences from bacteria and other types of virus -- so that the algorithm could find ways of distinguishing between them.
For the latest study, Simon Roux, a computational biologist at the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI) in Walnut Creek, California, trained computers to identify the genetic sequences of viruses from one unusual family, Inoviridae. These viruses live in bacteria and alter their host's behaviour: for instance, they make the bacteria that cause cholera, Vibrio cholerae, more toxic. But Roux, who presented his work at the meeting in San Francisco, California, organized by the JGI, estimates that fewer than 100 species had been identified before his research began. Roux presented a machine-learning algorithm with two sets of data -- one containing 805 genomic sequences from known Inoviridae, and another with about 2,000 sequences from bacteria and other types of virus -- so that the algorithm could find ways of distinguishing between them.
Between Humans, AI, and Viruses?
Looks like someone beat me to the punch at bring up the question of "AI" or pseudo intelligence.
Many smart people are shouting the dangers of AI at the moment when we couldn't be further from it. First of all your have to define what intelligence is with whom you start having a discussion first. For instance an I.Q. test can easily be passed by a knowledge engine with a high score but it's hardly a "mind".
To me a "mind" is one that is capable of doing all the things a human mind can do. A human mind is capable of emotion, confusion, and going crazy as well as logic and intuitive reasoning. There is a structure of neural networks that we are born with. We as of yet have little control over the "wetware".
But the time is coming for when the brain and artificial neutral networks will combine.Think of it as a smartphone in your head at first. We will have a classic microchip in our head and we will be able to program it as such. Anytime you try to add it's automatically rerouted to the chip which can do it much faster. Similarly we will be able to create and manage massive databases within our minds. It will be much faster than wetware.Then we get into artificial neural chips which we will similarly be able to program. They may start out as very tiny chips but eventually they will become three dimensional. It could at some point reach the size of a golf ball and it will be inside your brain. After that all mental growth will be through external computers we network with.
The singularity is the point when after you are implanted you don't need to be taught how to use it or how to do anything for that matter. There still will be natural aptitude and the physical knowledge like playing a piano or a guitar but one will be able to pick it up exponentially faster.
There will be no war with "AI" per say. It will be enhanced "evolving" humans verses natural humans (luddies). There is no skynet.
Grab your partner dosie-do!
What's intelligence? Here we GO!
It's 'per se', not 'per say'.
Take note that th they are not referred to as viri!
because there might be a lot of false positive in that 6,000.
This is a very special virus that infects its host, H sapiens. It affects their brain and make them identify the virus strains that compete with it (genus Celestial species teapot) and go on an all out effort to get rid of the competitor. The C teapot virus will occupy the niche vacated by these aggressive treatment, but the brains of the H sapiens it affects will never see it or identify it.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Sounds like an AI would be able to find it even if we couldn't.