Google’s DeepMind AI Can Predict the Structure of Almost All Known Proteins

DeepMind built an algorithm called AlphaFold, which by analyzing the chemical makeup of thousands of known proteins and their 3D shapes, has used that information to predict the shapes of unknown proteins with high accuracy. In July they announced that they have used AlphaFold to predict the structure of 214 million proteins from more than one million species, essentially all known protein-coding sequences, and make them publicly available for free.

The prediction of a protein’s structure from its DNA sequence alone has been one of biology’s greatest challenges. Current experimental methods to determine the shape of a single protein take months or years in a laboratory This is why it is estimated that only about 190,000, or 0.1%, of known protein structures, have been solved.

In July 2021, DeepMind announced it had predicted the shape of all human proteins, helping to better understand human health and diseases. These structures along with the +200m structural models just announced are available in an open database jointly maintained with the European Molecular Biology Laboratory’s European Bioinformatics Institute.

Over the past year, scientists have applied AlphaFold in all sorts of ways. Some have used its predictions to identify new families of proteins (which now need to be verified experimentally). Some are using it to help the search for drugs to treat neglected diseases. AlphaFold’s current predictions on their own are not a monumental step change in drug discovery they are working on an evolution of the AI which can predict how proteins change shape when they interact with each other.

UK Approves Plans for World’s Largest Automated Drone Super-Highway

The UK is set to become home to the world's largest automated drone superhighway within the next two years after the government approved plans for 164 miles (265 km) of drone highways. The Skyway project as its known will connect towns and cities, including Cambridge and Reading.

Current laws require drones to be operated by a human pilot, however, Skyway will use new technology to enable automated ‘pilotless’ drones to be flown beyond-visual-line-of-sight (BVLOS). Any drone manufacturer will be able to connect a drone’s guidance and communication systems into a virtual superhighway system that handles the safe guidance of drones to their destinations via software integration.

Skyway will be outfitted with ground-based sensors and communication hardware that coordinate with onboard drone sensors to feed air traffic control data to autonomous aircraft as they fly. The system will be managed, appropriately, by an automated traffic management system.

The target date to have drones navigating the Skyway is by mid-2024, but there is one problem that still remains to be tackled. That is the off-Skyway last mile of a drone's trip. Here the project is still coordinating with the UK’s CAA (Civil Aviation Authority) to ensure drones that have taken an off-ramp are still operating safely.

Google Engineer Claims AI Reached Sentience and Hired a Lawyer For Itself

Suspended Google engineer Blake Lemoine made the news globally in June when he publically claimed that one of the company's experimental AIs called LaMDA had achieved sentience, prompting the company to place him on administrative leave. LaMDA, short for Language Model for Dialogue Applications, is Google’s system for building chatbots based off of its most advanced large language models, it is called this because it mimics speech by ingesting trillions of words from the internet.

Lemoine, who worked for Google’s Responsible AI organization, began talking to LaMDA as part of his job in late 2021. He had signed up to test if the artificial intelligence used discriminatory or hate speech. He claims that as he talked to LaMDA about religion, Lemoine, who studied cognitive and computer science in college, noticed the chatbot talking about its rights and personhood, and decided to press further.

He claims he was placed on leave after taking the matter to people outside of the company when his claims were rebuffed internally. The story has attracted a lot of attention from across the Scientific community and led to debates about how to quantify sentience and indeed whether an AI could even be sentient.

Most scientists believe that based on the evidence presented by Lemoine that LaMDA certainly is not sentient. Perhaps the most interesting twist came a few days after the initial story broke however, when Lemoine claimed that LaMDA had hired an rights attorney to defend its ‘rights’ in court after the lawyer and LaMDA chatted to each other at Lemoines house. Unfortunately Lemoine now says that the Lawyer in question has backed out of defending the AI.