Most people still associate DeepMind with playing Go. And well, everyone has to start somewhere, but that moment is already ancient history. What’s happening now is that these Google folks have set up a lab that looks like a factory of crazy ideas ideas that actually work.
They haven’t stopped at teaching a machine to win games, they’ve gone much further and are sticking their noses into places that until recently seemed like science fiction.
In biology they’ve done what seemed impossible, predicting proteins like someone reading a book. You’ve heard of AlphaFold, maybe yes, maybe no.
Well, that’s theirs and it has changed the rules of the game. Before, figuring out how a protein folded could take you years of grinding away in the lab.
Now, with their new tool AlphaGenome, they can read DNA sequences of a million letters and guess in a second whether a mutation is going to mess up a gene or not.
It’s not magic, it’s AI applied to biology, and researchers are already using this for rare diseases or cancer. They’ve released the database for free and more than two million scientists are putting it through its paces.
Then they go and get into medicine, but without a lab coat. They’ve created something they call AMIE, which is like a doctor in the shadows. It’s not the typical chatbot that throws out four phrases pulled from the internet.
What this artificial guy does is hold clinical conversations, with empathy and everything, and on top of that it turns out that in tests it got more diagnoses right than real doctors.
Mind you, it’s not there to replace them, they say, but to lend a hand. But if I’m being honest, if on top of getting more right it also treats you better, maybe the ones who should be worried are the doctors.
And they don’t just heal people, they also want to heal the planet. They’ve released AlphaEarth, which is basically a virtual satellite that monitors the Earth.
While Google Maps takes you to your buddy’s bar, AlphaEarth is busy measuring deforestation, water stress or how cities grow.
The mind-blowing thing is that they can analyze the world’s surface in 10×10 meter squares and on top of that they take up very little space. Even NASA and the FAO are using it to monitor climate change, not to get you to your destination faster.
The robots thing is another level entirely, they literally fold a t-shirt for you. They’ve presented Gemini Robotics, which is an artificial intelligence model they’ve put into robots so they understand the world physically.
It’s not the clumsy robot of always, this one is capable of folding an origami, putting a sandwich in a ziplock bag or carefully picking up a cup by the handle.
They’ve plugged it into Boston Dynamics and other heavyweights, and the idea is for robots to stop always doing the same thing and start thinking based on what’s happening around them. There’s something that gives me the creeps a bit, but it’s also fascinating.
To wrap up, they’ve created virtual worlds where you go in and walk around. It’s called Genie 3, and it’s not that you generate a video and watch it, no.
You type something and it creates an interactive world that you move around in with the keyboard, like a video game but generated on the spot.
You want to be in an Egyptian temple or riding a horse? Well, it makes it for you. The problem right now is memory, because if you draw something on a whiteboard and turn your head, when you come back it’s been erased.
But hey, if they already keep it going for more than a minute, soon we’ll have worlds that last as long as you want.