Los Alamos AI model wins flu forecasting challenge

A probabilistic artificial intelligence computer model developed at Los Alamos National Laboratory provided the most accurate state, national, and regional forecasts of the flu in 2018, beating 23 other teams in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's FluSight Challenge. The CDC announced the results last week. "Accurately forecasting diseases is similar to weather forecasting in that you need to feed computer models large amounts of data so they can'learn' trends," said Dave Osthus, a statistician at Los Alamos and developer of the computer model, Dante. "But it's very different because disease spread depends on daily choices humans make in their behavior--such as travel, hand-washing, riding public transportation, interacting with the healthcare system, among other things. Those are very difficult to predict."