[HN Gopher] CERN trains AI models to revolutionize cancer treatment
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CERN trains AI models to revolutionize cancer treatment
Author : geox
Score : 73 points
Date : 2024-10-05 12:12 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (english.elpais.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (english.elpais.com)
| pmdulaney wrote:
| Seems a bit outside their wheelhouse, no?
| amelius wrote:
| You mean like the web was also?
| pmdulaney wrote:
| Good point!
| serf wrote:
| model fitting and extrapolation from large data sets seems like
| it would be _exactly_ their wheelhouse.
| Kye wrote:
| I always assumed ML was used in processing data from the LHC.
| I don't see any other way to deal with so much.
| superluserdo wrote:
| It is and has been for a while, but most of the more flashy
| and exciting developments in ML and AI don't have very much
| applicability to LHC event processing. To be able to state
| any kind of finding about some aspect of physics based on
| the scattering of particles in the accelerator and their
| decays in the detector, you need to take the background of
| all events and make multivariate discriminants on the data
| in order to enrich your signal as much as possible while
| throwing as little as possible away. This requires you to
| have a rigorous and verifiable statistical "paper trail"
| from start to finish, so you can say with confidence
| intervals how much signal and background you ought to have,
| vs how much you measure in your data after processing it.
| An overly broad black box doesn't really work for this kind
| of introspection.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| Things like boosted decision trees have been used in
| several instances, like this[1] or this[2]. Surely other
| methods as well.
|
| [1]: https://indico.bnl.gov/event/10699/contributions/53933
| /attac...
|
| [2]: https://inspirehep.net/literature/1665070
| dan_linder wrote:
| Considering LLMs are getting larger each generation, CERN is a
| great place to investigate their applications.
|
| The data captured, stored, processed, and evaluated after just
| one of their more notable experiments generate petabytes of
| data.
|
| They know a thing or two that directly apply.
| soared wrote:
| I can't grasp what this is about. It starts saying it enables
| hospital to store and process their data onsite (not really an
| innovation in any way) but then later says the hospital computers
| still contact a main server for analysis. So is this just on
| premise data analysis ("ai") but also cloud?
| jdylanm wrote:
| Sounds like they use a method called federated learning. I.e.
| each site can train a local model on their own data and then
| share model parameters to a central entity that aggregates
| several sites model parameters. Superior performance can then
| be achieved (and also raw training data between sites are not
| shared).
| diggan wrote:
| I understood it as this: Hospitals keep the data locally and
| run AI analysis on-site. They then exchange certain parameters
| (not the raw data) with a central server, which uses these
| parameters to update and improve the model. The central server
| doesn't run the models or process the data itself, it's just
| used to refine the AI models that the hospitals are using
| locally.
|
| Someone please correct me if I understood it wrong.
| nuz wrote:
| Makes me think CERN has too much money
| polotics wrote:
| Projects get funding just like at any other public-funded
| science institutions: with a lot of scrutiny and advocacy, if
| you think these 153'000 CHF ($178'000):
|
| https://knowledgetransfer.web.cern.ch/kt-fund/projects/novel...
|
| ...is too much money, then I'm glad: you probably don't have
| cancer!
| jajko wrote:
| Nope too little, this 1000x rather than 1% optimization and
| data collection on ad preferences of tech giants.
|
| CERN's side projects gave us WWW for example, so you could
| write your comment.
| woleium wrote:
| What is that overhead power and... other things... device in the
| image?
| markedathome wrote:
| looks like https://www.hohenloher.com/en/products/fly-one/
| this, though it looks as though the CERN images might be on a
| movable ceiling mounted track.
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| This is what AI should be doing instead of ChatGPT stuff.
| snek_case wrote:
| Why not both? I think Claude is probably already more useful
| and helpful than many doctors. It would be nice to one day be
| able to just chat with an AI bot from home and get
| prescriptions or test sheets delivered. You could add automatic
| safeguards for certain medications or for drug interactions.
|
| Obviously we're not there yet but many people in the world have
| access to no medical care or only expensive and crappy medical
| care.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| > chat with an AI bot from home and get prescriptions or test
| sheets delivered
|
| That would be a glorious day because most doctors are
| spectacularly bad at it. It will never happen though because
| the medical establishment is very protective, and will never
| allow it if using one's health insurance.
|
| Meanwhile, I have a corresponding Custom GPT that I find
| useful: https://chatgpt.com/g/g-Myvb8o0yb-medical-lab-tests-
| advisor
| OutOfHere wrote:
| Fwiw, ChatGPT can give reasonable cancer prevention advice
| which should always be the focus for most of us. Also, tech
| behind ChatGPT can be used to do a survey of a specific
| cancer's main research using various RAG based tools or using
| my free software such as
| https://github.com/impredicative/newssurvey
| vouaobrasil wrote:
| Unfortunately, while AI has some helpful uses like this, it
| will be used for trivial and even worse, nefarious purposes as
| well. And I do think the nefarious will outweigh the good for
| sure, but those who develop it and sell it to the highest
| bidder will undoubtedly point to stuff like this to use the
| emotions of the general populace to twist their perceptions to
| ignore the nefarious.
|
| A lot of technology gets entrenched using such mechanisms even
| though its benefits are questionable. Genetic engineering, what
| could go wrong? But think of the sick children?
|
| Not knocking what these people are trying to do, but I do think
| that if you add up all the positives and negatives of AI, the
| negatives far outweigh the positives.
| derektank wrote:
| I'm not sure how much of it is hype targeted at potential
| shareholders vs. reality but Moderna claims that they've
| incorporated ChatGPT into their business processes where
| they're using it to, among other things, predict optimal
| therapeutic dosages for their drugs
|
| https://investors.modernatx.com/news/news-details/2024/Moder...
| greenyouse wrote:
| It feel silly to say that AI is curing cancer. Normally a phrase
| like that would sinal the apex of the hype cycle but I guess it
| actually has some meat in this situation. Using AI more like
| statistical inference to screen for medical conditions or predict
| treatment could be helpful. I remember Jeremy Howard from fast.ai
| did that with deep learning to detect things in medical images.
| Seems like a good thing for CERN to do as long as it works.
| Centigonal wrote:
| There is a venerable pattern in academic circles of branding
| your research with the language of whatever hype cycle is
| currently active. The same research can be branded under big
| data, computer vision, AI, or whatever else the current trends
| demand.
| dmix wrote:
| Reading in between the lines it seems most of the innovation is
| managing the regulations and privacy concerns of large
| institutions who want to use shared AI models.
|
| > offers hospitals its experience in managing huge amounts of
| data in a secure and decentralized way, which is key to ensuring
| the privacy and security of the private patient information used
| to feed the algorithm. [...] uses a system to process data
| locally without sending it to central storage. This helps protect
| privacy and make better use of resources when different hospitals
| work together to create reliable AI-based models
|
| Which probably makes sense why CERN developed some expertise in
| this area.
| blackeyeblitzar wrote:
| Is this really about CERN's skill or CERN's access? I bet many
| startups could revolutionize the medical industry but lack
| capital or access to patient data or access to customers (gate
| keeping by hospitals and insurance companies and regulations and
| so on).
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