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Are there any genuine benefits to AI? (self.technology)

submitted 9 months ago by fiddlestix to c/technology

101 comments fedilink hide all child comments

I can see some minor benefits - I use it for the odd bit of mundane writing and some of the image creation stuff is interesting,, and I knew that a lot of people use it for coding etc - but mostly it seems to be about making more cash for corporations and stuffing the internet with bots and fake content. Am I missing something here? Are there any genuine benefits?

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Someone I know recently published in Nature Communications an enormous study where they used machine learning to pattern match peptides that are clinically significant/bioactive (don’t forget, the vast amount of peptides are currently believed to be degradation products).

Using mass spectrometry, they effectively shoot a sawed off shotgun at a wall then using machine learning to detect pellets that may have interesting effects. This opens up for new understanding in the role peptides play in the translational game as well as a potential for a huge amount of new treatments for a vast swathe of diseases.

[–] Fried_out_Kombi 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Sounds similar to some of the research my sister has done in her PhD so far. As I understand, she had a bunch of snapshots of proteins from a cryo electron microscope, but these snapshots are 2D. She used ML to construct 3D shapes of different types of proteins. And finding the shape of a protein is important because the shape defines the function. It's crazy stuff that would be ludicrously difficult and time-consuming to try to do manually.

[–] deafboy 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

There was an interesting talk about it at the last CCC. However, I also remember a few reports casting doubts upon the results of this method.