AlphaFold

Convolutional neural networks separate proteins into functional families without considering their shapes.

In 2021, transformers were harnessed to discover drugs, recognize speech, and paint pictures — and much more.

Isomorphic aims to build its business on AlphaFold 2, an ensemble of neural networks that finds the shapes of protein molecules.

DeepMind opened access to AlphaFold, a model that finds the shapes of proteins, and to its output so far — a potential cornucopia for biomedical research. The research lab, a division of Google’s parent company Alphabet, made AlphaFold freely available.

Neural nets could speed up development of new materials.What’s new: A deep learning system from Sandia National Laboratories dramatically accelerated simulations that help scientists understand how changes to the design or fabrication of a material change its properties.

Institutional hurdles to AI for medicine began to fall, setting the stage for widespread clinical use of deep learning in medical devices and treatments. DeepMind’s AlphaFold model determined the three-dimensional shape of a protein in just hours.

Machine learning thrives on data, but information about the novel coronavirus and the illness it produces has been either thin or hard to access. Now researchers are pooling resources to share everything we do know.

A protein’s biological function depends largely on its three-dimensional shape, but deducing its shape from its sequence of amino acids has been a longstanding problem. Researchers at DeepMind reveal how they used deep learning to solve the puzzle.

Alphabet subsidiary DeepMind lost $572 million in the past year, and its losses over the last three years amounted to more than $1 billion. AI contrarian Gary Marcus used the news as an opportunity to question the direction of AI as an industry.