Google's DeepMind Is Using AI To Help Scientists Understand Coronavirus

Google's DeepMind is putting its artificial intelligence systems to a new task: trying to figure out certain properties of the novel coronavirus which has killed thousands in the past couple of months. In a post Thursday, DeepMind (which was acquired by Google in 2014 and is now a subsidiary of Alphabet), said it has put its AlphaFold system to create "structure predictions of several under-studied proteins associated with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19." These predictions haven't been experimentally verified, DeepMind says, but they may help scientists understand how the coronavirus functions. This, in turn, may be of use when developing a vaccine or cure. DeepMind says that understanding a protein's structure typically takes months or longer.