Cracking Open the Black Box of AI with Cell Biology

The deep neural networks that power today's artificial intelligence systems work in mysterious ways. They're black boxes: A question goes in ("Is this a photo of a cat?" "What's the best next move in this game of Go?" "Should this self-driving car accelerate at this yellow light?"), and an answer comes out the other side. We may not know exactly how a black box AI system works, but we know that it does work. But a new study that mapped a neural network to the components within a simple yeast cell allowed researchers to watch the AI system at work. And it gave them insights into cell biology in the process.