J. WHITE BEAR
Sep 1, 2018 · 2 min read

Saving the world with AI or an ode to my tiny efforts.

Let’s be honest, tech will not save the world. I know, I know…it’s sad and not what you read about in school or feeding into how cool tech giants are, which only really happens sometimes. We are probably far from the time of singularity or AI PWNing humankind. The truth is machines cannot solve the problems that humans created, because they are perpetuation of the problems inherent in our current human society. We build those problems into our machines and algorithms.

When we define success at all costs means the costs of other humans, the environment, and the parts of our lives that truly give us meaning. If your priority is going to space above paying your laborers a fare wage, you have disconnected yourself from the things that would have been the salvation of society to begin with and all those issues will follow you to space. Like B’rer Rabbit said, “You cain’t run from trouble, ain’t no place that far.” If we allow money, fame, or power to excuse people from the consequences of their actions we are contributing to our own downfall.

Small things we can do is focus on the problems within our reach and work slowly and laboriously towards the long-term solutions to those problems. I did that once upon a time and I solved nothing. Did I make progress? Maybe. Am I successful? Not by the current definition. So what I am even talking about? A paper I wrote during graduate school that applied AI and NLP to searching for vaccine candidates for a Neglected Tropical Disease. Yes, that’s a real disease category that includes diseases like chagas, hookworm, and rabies. It means diseases that affect poor people and/or people in parts of the world we have decided we care less about. My research looked at schistosomiasis. It will take years, maybe decades before anything I have done is decided to matter and, maybe, it never will, but this is one of the things I’ve done that I’m most proud of using AI. I hope to continue to grow and do more things in life, but yeah. No amount money could give me that feeling, fun trips maybe, but that feeling of accomplishment- no.

You can feed a lot of people for a day if you are rich and that’s a good thing, too. However, being the spark that ignites the change that allows disenfranchised people to have a stable, local food supply and adequate education to govern themselves is a beautiful thing, but the PR may take decades and people may forget you exist before you become “successful” if you ever do.

That being said, I am blogging this to brag. I did something I’m proud of and it took years, cost a lot, and I, hope, I contributed something. I hope. Predictions of novel Schistosoma mansoni — human protein interactions consistent with experimental data.

J. WHITE BEAR

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Machine Learning and Analytics. MIT. Saving the world one algorithm at a time. Solely culpable for any views you don’t like. Caveat emptor.