Please welcome Samantha Higgins, who defines herself as a professional writer with a passion for research, observation, and innovation. She resides in Portland, Oregon with her husband and her two twin boys. When she’s not writing about artificial intelligence and other technology subjects, Samantha loves kayaking and reading creative non-fiction. In this her first contribution to 21st Century Tech Blog, she talks about the progress being made by those who create the neural networks that make computers learn about the patterns in human existence. That’s what machine learning is all about.

Machine learning is a technology that gives us language translation applications, word prediction when composing emails and texts, and suggestions on the order presentation within social media feeds. It is a technology used by many industries from healthcare where it can aid in medical diagnosis and interpretation of radiology images, as well as in the operation of autonomous vehicles.

Machine learning is a subcategory of artificial intelligence (AI), software tools that learn without explicitly relying on programming. Many companies deploying AI today are primarily using machine learning to help reduce labor costs and increase productivity.

Recent advances in AI are using deep learning to identify areas within human organs that surgeons can safely dissect before operating, machine learning to predict if patients with memory issues will develop Alzheimer’s within two years, and deep learning to analyze eye scans during routine examinations to identify patients at short-term high risk for a heart attack.

AI is being used for surgical guidance in the OR, for predicting early-onset Alzheimer’s, and through eye exams who may have a heart attack.

Research on proteins has been front and centre in our battle to defeat COVID-19. That’s why major efforts are being made to unlock the mystery of how combinations of amino acids when folded can be powerful tools in combatting diseases and more.

DeepMind in the UK and the University of Washington leading the way in proteins research to meet 21st-century problems and challenges.

BONN, Germany — When you’re sick, you can often see it in your face that you’re not feeling well. For rare diseases, it’s usually not that easy. However, researchers in Germany say artificial intelligence may change all that. A team from the University of Bonn say a new facial analysis program can actually detect the warning signs of rare diseases by examining the features of a person’s face.

“The goal is to detect such diseases at an early stage and initiate appropriate therapy as soon as possible,” says Prof. Dr. Peter Krawitz from the Institute for Genomic Statistics and Bioinformatics (IGSB) at the University Hospital Bonn in a university release.