AI in Biology: Current and Future Applications
Written by Antonella Revelo
What is AI?
What is artificial intelligence?
Artificial intelligence is a computer science-related field in which machine learning and specifically designed programs are able to accomplish certain tasks quicker, faster, and more efficiently than humans.
Artificial intelligence can replace some human skills such as recognizing, processing, and distinguishing input and can provide us results that are useful. Having this background information in mind, artificial intelligence has advanced to such a high and rapid degree, that it can be applied to a variety of fields of study that we may have never considered.
This includes various scientific fields and liberal arts fields where artificial intelligence has improved outcomes, processes, the quality of work, and the way things function.
How AI is applied to Biology, Medicine, and Physics
Within the scientific fields, AI’s application in deep learning, image recognition, and overall data analysis has opened the doors to advancements in fields such as medicine, biology, and physics.
In biology, the implementation of a machine-learning model has been crucial in minimizing the time it takes to analyze a protein's structure, and predict its effects.
According to an article published by The Royal Society, with an artificial intelligence model, biologists can predict a protein’s shape and structure and can determine the way it may affect a person by feeding the machine learning model with lots of DNA data. With more data, the model’s results will improve during the training process, and thus, predictions of the DNA sequence and the created amino acids will be more accurate (The Alan Tutoring Institution, n.d. pg. 3).
Throughout the Inspirit AI 2021 Summer Program, the project I focused on demonstrated how AI in biology can be directly implemented in medicine and facilitate the jobs of doctors by reducing heavy loads of work as we created a machine learning model that recognized skin cancer images and classified the images with a specific skin cancer category.
The model was trained on augmented data, where algorithms were used to increase and modify the original data in order to properly train the model. This improved our model’s efficiency when categorizing the images. If the model was used in a professional setting, it would mean that doctors could avoid examining x-rays and use the results of the model to immediately treat patients.
The model did have areas of improvements, but overall, the idea did emphasize how AI can be applied in medicine to benefit both doctors and patients.
The use of artificial intelligence in physics is similar to its uses of AI in biology.
One of our speakers in the Ambassador program, Emmy Li, a Stanford Graduate in Computational Physics and Data Science, shared how AI-coded programs and machine learning models will aid physics studies and research. This will include using relevant data from studies and experiments to train a model that provide results that will help scientists draw quick conclusions and predict outcomes.
Within the fields of science, artificial intelligence plays an important role in ingesting data, classifying the data, and providing meaningful output.
In order for these models to work and be as effective as possible, they must be trained with a variety of diverse data, since they are still machines and can’t infer or critically think like humans do.
How AI can be applied to Art and Music
When talking about the impact of Artificial Intelligence in liberal arts, we tend to wonder how a machine learning model can be leveraged in the arts, particularly the music industry and design industry.
In design, AI has supported the design process by reviewing drafts of possible products.
As an article stated, “In the design aspect, the most exciting thing about artificial intelligence is that it will be able to let the team know beforehand during the design phase whether or not a specific design will be successful or will flop” (Shanin, n.d., para. 13). This will not only improve designers' work by reducing the amount of mistakes they will make, but also allow designers to take a base design and then edit it in a certain manner according to a client's needs or according to the goal they are looking to accomplish.
Moving on to the music industry, artificial intelligence promises a future era filled with unique creativity that may be able to create new forms of music and genres. Even though we haven’t yet reached a point where artificial intelligence songs are considered better and more likable than human made music, artificial intelligence has enabled individuals to create songs easier and faster.
The app Amper, is now a trending app because users can create their own music from scratch. This app allows one to choose from various genres, rhythm, beats, and style. Once the user chooses the categories and details for their song, the machine learning model will be able to blend all of the beats, rhythms, and notes in a certain way, so that the user is pleased with the result.
Through Amper, people and creators are able to make their own music without the need of a professional studio. A fun fact about this app is that it has been classified as an app that can help people with disorders such as ADHD, as users can design a song suitable for their concentration and purpose. In conclusion, it’s still uncertain what the impact of artificial intelligence will be in music, but it indeed proves once again that it will improve people’s lives.
Artificial intelligence is an advancing field that continues improving the way we live and will certainly be found in a myriad of fields in the future. Maybe you should consider taking an AI class and learn how you can apply AI in your career or field!
APA Reference Section
Chow, A. (2020, February 5). ‘There’s a wide-open horizon of possibility.’ Musicians are using AI to create otherwise impossible new songs. Time. Retrieved from https://time.com/5774723/ai-music/
The Alan Turing Institute. (n.d.). The AI revolution in scientific research. The Royal Society. Retrieved from https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/ai-and-society/AI-revolution-in-science.pdf?la=en-GB&hash=5240F21B56364A00053538A0BC29FF5F
https://time.com/5774723/ai-music/
Shanin, S. (n.d.). How artificial intelligence is transforming product development and design. eTeam. Retrieved from https://www.eteam.io/blog/ai-and-product-development-design
Yeung, J. (2020, February 22). Three major fields of artificial intelligence and their industrial applications. towards data science. Retrieved from https://towardsdatascience.com/three-major-fields-of-artificial-intelligence-and-their-industrial-applications-8f67bf0c2b46
