[HN Gopher] Iumenta: A generic framework for animal digital twins
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Iumenta: A generic framework for animal digital twins
        
       Author : sandwichsphinx
       Score  : 23 points
       Date   : 2024-11-19 03:54 UTC (19 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (arxiv.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (arxiv.org)
        
       | j-pb wrote:
       | Reminds me of:
       | https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Have_No_Mouth,_and_I_Must_...
       | 
       | AI overloard controls your every existence until you are killed.
        
         | block_dagger wrote:
         | One of the best (and incidentally one of the first) scifi
         | stories I ever read. Certainly stuck with me.
        
       | thom wrote:
       | I have no idea why it needles me so much, and I will
       | cathartically accept any downvotes, but why has the phrase
       | "digital twin" entered our lexicon when it just means "model" or
       | "simulation"? I've worked with incredibly smart AI engineers who
       | talked about "building a digital twin" when they just meant
       | "storing some data". Maddening.
        
         | tupshin wrote:
         | It generally means model running in parallel with the actual
         | system. It is not just about being able to store data, but
         | about being able to mirror (and sometimes predict/replicate)
         | exactly what that system is doing.
         | 
         | In current software parlance, this is often used in stupidly
         | trivial ways, but digital twins have a long and important
         | history and function
         | 
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_twin
        
           | PittleyDunkin wrote:
           | To use this terminology on biological systems seems more like
           | a very lofty goal than anything realizable with current
           | technology.
           | 
           | Not that there's any issue with lofty goals.
        
           | uoaei wrote:
           | There's a huge difference between modeling only the
           | stimulus/response, and modeling the full interior and
           | exterior dynamics. "Digital twin" only refers to the latter.
           | 
           | I wholeheartedly agree that it's a safe bet that very very
           | few digital twin projects achieve anything close to what they
           | propose. More typically it is a flashy label to stun
           | management. I actually worked on digital twins -- I came into
           | ML via physics -- and once you start digging, you find the
           | rabbit hole is deep enough that absent massive government
           | grants or angel corporate investors you will never get
           | anywhere close to what could be a called a digital twin.
        
         | bArray wrote:
         | I think it has been around for a while, but I agree that it
         | seems to be pushed more now. Keeping a model in step with a
         | real-world environment is to be fair actually quite complex, so
         | I can see a lot of work needing to be done, and that work
         | needing a clear name.
        
         | wink wrote:
         | In the definition (or maybe even more the usage) I know, you're
         | missing certain properties.
         | 
         | E.g. you can and will sync properties to the digital twin, and
         | back. Obviously this does not work for animals (yet?...) but
         | the digital twin of a car can have changes that are then
         | propagated back to the original.
         | 
         | I don't get any of this in any definition of "model" or
         | "simulation" I know.
        
         | leonheld wrote:
         | This is my personal opinion, from working in such places:
         | research institutes in Europe get grants very, very easily if
         | they mention anything related to "Industrie 4.0", and one of
         | those keywords is "Digital Twin". Another good one is "Real-
         | Time".
         | 
         | Note that I'm not directing this comment specificaly at the
         | authors of these papers (I haven't read it, just skimmed
         | through it). Just observations from experience.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-11-19 23:02 UTC)