john hawks weblog

paleoanthropology, genetics and evolution

artificial intelligence

  • Can Watson navigate the medical literature?

    Wed, 2011-09-21 08:30 -- John Hawks

    Last week, Computerworld reported that IBM's famous "Watson" supercomputer is moving to its next challenge: prescribing cancer treatments for the WellPoint health plan.

    For example, Watson's analytics technology, used with Nuance's voice and clinical language understanding software, could help a physician consider all related texts, reference materials, prior cases, and latest knowledge in journals and medical literature when treating an illness. The analysis could quickly help physicians determine the best options for diagnosis and treatment.

    "There are breathtaking advances in medical science and clinical knowledge [but] this clinical information is not always used in the care of patients," said Dr. Sam Nussbaum, WellPoint's Chief Medical Officer, in a statement.

    Looks to me like a first step to removing humans from the decision-making chain. A.I., the ultimate bureaucrat. Plus, it can beat Ken Jennings on Jeopardy!

    It occurs to me that the current medical literature is really poorly suited for AI trawling, in many ways. The data and results are obfuscated in many ways, and there's a strong publication bias toward positive results. Someone asked me just today about why open science is interesting to many of us, and the positive results bias struck me as a really important aspect. When you are keeping an open notebook, the negative results are right there along with the positives. Open notebook science might be better for AI-enhanced treatment plans. In any event, a more standard form of result reporting would be helpful. Why can't anyone run their own meta-analysis anytime she chooses?

    Tags: 
    open science
    artificial intelligence
    health
    technology
    journals
    metascience

  • Computer composer

    Thu, 2010-02-25 11:40 -- John Hawks

    An article about classical composer David Cope and the AI programs he wrote to make original music. It's not new news, but a nice profile with many "what does it mean to be creative?" moments.

    Cope had taken an unconventional approach. Many artificial creativity programs use a more sophisticated version of the method Cope first tried with Bach. It’s called intelligent misuse — they program sets of rules, and then let the computer introduce randomness. Cope, however, had stumbled upon a different way of understanding creativity.

    In his view, all music — and, really, any creative pursuit — is largely based on previously created works. Call it standing on the shoulders of giants; call it plagiarism. Everything we create is just a product of recombination.

    I'd call it "culture". The long-term direction may look random, but "styles" cohere over time because people take from each other. The article's leitmotif is Cope's near-Quixotic quest to write a truly life-changing piece of music. It's ironic that he discovers how to make music that humans can't tell from yesterday's classics, but tomorrow's classics will be determined by those very same human arbitrers of taste.

    Tags: 
    profile
    artificial intelligence
    culture
    technology
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Neandertals

For years, I've worked on their bones. Now I'm working on their genes. Read more about the science studying these ancient people.

Denisova

From a finger bone of an ancient human came the record of a completely unexpected population. My lab is working on the science of the Denisova genome.

Acceleration

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Malapa

Just outside Johannesburg, the Malapa site is producing some of the most exciting finds in human evolution. This site is the headquarters of the Malapa Soft Tissue Project.