In a classic case of finding a balance between costs and benefits of science, researchers are grappling with the question of how artificial intelligence in medicine can and should be applied to clinical patient care – despite knowing that there are examples where it puts patients' lives at risk. The question was central to a recent university of Adelaide seminar, part of the Research Tuesdays lecture series, titled "Antidote AI." As artificial intelligence grows in sophistication and usefulness, we have begun to see it appearing more and more in everyday life. From AI traffic control and ecological studies, to machine learning finding the origins of a Martian meteorite and reading Arnhem Land rock art, the possibilities seem endless for AI research. The genuine excitement clinicians and artificial intelligence researchers feel for the prospect of AI assisting in patient care is palpable and honourable. Medicine is, after all, about helping people and the ethical foundation is "do no harm."

ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA--Cosmos Magazine reports that Daryl Wesley of Flinders University and Mimal and Marrku Traditional Owners of the Wilton River area used machine learning to analyze changes in rock art styles in northern Australia's Arnhem Land. The computer was supplied with information of more than 1,000 types of objects and a mathematical model to determine how similar two images are to one another. The model was then applied to images of the rock art. "One amazing outcome is that the machine learning approach ordered the styles in the same chronology that archaeologists have ordered them in by inspecting which appear on top of which," said team member Jarrad Kowlessar of Flinders University. Styles of artwork that are closer to each other in age are also closer to each other in appearance, he explained.

Most sites are remote and often impossible to even approach closely by vehicle. South Australian researchers have been working with the Mimal and Marrku traditional owners of the Wilton River area in Australia's Top End to analyse the evolution of rock art through machine learning. The study, led by Flinders University archaeologist Dr Daryl Wesley, saw the group test different styles of rock art of human figures in Arnhem Land labelled "northern running figures", "dynamic figures", "post dynamic figures", and "simple figures with boomerangs" to understand how the styles relate to one another. The team used machine learning to analyse images of rock art collected during surveys in Marrku country in 2018 and 2019. The approach used previously trained and published convolutional neural network models and dataset combinations that were each designed and trained for object classification.