American students have changed their majors — from bloomberg.com by Justin Fox
Health professions are in, education and the humanities are out. Here are some reasons for the shift.
Tiny microbots fold like origami to travel through the human body — from digitaltrends.com by Georgina Torbet
Excerpt:
Tiny robots modeled after bacteria could be used to deliver drugs to hard to reach areas of the human body. Scientists at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) have developed what they call elastic microbots that can change shape depending on their environment.
Intelligent Machines: One of the fathers of AI is worried about its future — from technologyreview.com by Will Knight
Yoshua Bengio wants to stop talk of an AI arms race and make the technology more accessible to the developing world.
Excerpts:
Yoshua Bengio is a grand master of modern artificial intelligence.
Alongside Geoff Hinton and Yann LeCun, Bengio is famous for championing a technique known as deep learning that in recent years has gone from an academic curiosity to one of the most powerful technologies on the planet.
Deep learning involves feeding data to large neural networks that crudely simulate the human brain, and it has proved incredibly powerful and effective for all sorts of practical tasks, from voice recognition and image classification to controlling self-driving cars and automating business decisions.
Bengio has resisted the lure of any big tech company. While Hinton and LeCun joined Google and Facebook, respectively, he remains a full-time professor at the University of Montreal. (He did, however, cofound Element AI in 2016, and it has built a very successful business helping big companies explore the commercial applications of AI research.)
Bengio met with MIT Technology Review’s senior editor for AI, Will Knight, at an MIT event recently.
What do you make of the idea that there’s an AI race between different countries?
I don’t like it. I don’t think it’s the right way to do it.
We could collectively participate in a race, but as a scientist and somebody who wants to think about the common good, I think we’re better off thinking about how to both build smarter machines and make sure AI is used for the well-being of as many people as possible.
EXCLUSIVE: Chinese scientists are creating CRISPR babies — from technologyreview.com by Antonio Regalado
A daring effort is under way to create the first children whose DNA has been tailored using gene editing.
Excerpt:
When Chinese researchers first edited the genes of a human embryo in a lab dish in 2015, it sparked global outcry and pleas from scientists not to make a baby using the technology, at least for the present.
It was the invention of a powerful gene-editing tool, CRISPR, which is cheap and easy to deploy, that made the birth of humans genetically modified in an in vitro fertilization (IVF) center a theoretical possibility.
Now, it appears it may already be happening.
Where some see a new form of medicine that eliminates genetic disease, others see a slippery slope to enhancements, designer babies, and a new form of eugenics.
AI can’t replace doctors. But it can make them better. — from technologyreview.com by Rahul Parikh; via Maree Conway
A machine can collate environmental data, genetic data, and patient history way better than I can.
Excerpts:
But for physicians like me in primary care, managing 1,500 to 2,000 patients, AI presents an opportunity. I went to medical school to connect with people and make a difference. Today I often feel like an overpaid bookkeeper instead, taking in information and spitting it back to patients, prescribing drugs and adjusting doses, ordering tests. But AI in the exam room opens up the chance to recapture the art of medicine. It could let me get to know my patients better, learn how a disease uniquely affects them, and give me time to coach them toward a better outcome.
…
AI might also help to manage asthma flares. For many patients, asthma gets worse as air pollution levels rise, as happened this past summer when brush fires swept through Northern California. AI could let us take environmental information and respond proactively.
…
Not long ago, in the Journal of the American Medical Association, I saw a colorful picture drawn by a child in crayon. It portrayed her pediatrician, eyes glued to the computer, while she sat on the exam table, looking wide-eyed. I hope that AI will soon allow me to turn my attention back to that little girl.
Rahul Parikh is a pediatrician in the San Francisco Bay area.