DeepMind AI Makes Breakthrough with 'Protein Folding Problem' - The New Stack

The possibilities seem almost endless as artificial intelligence continues to evolve: so far, it's in the process of automating the manufacturing, finance and construction industries, and even making inroads into making art, literature and music. But perhaps the biggest leap forward will be in the field of medicine, where AI is already helping medical professionals with diagnosing disease, identifying dangerous drug interactions and even performing surgery more accurately. And in a stunning win during the bi-annual Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction (CASP) competition, Google-affiliated AI research lab DeepMind showed that AI could potentially unlock one of the biggest mysteries of all: predicting how proteins fold themselves in three-dimensional space. Best known for creating AI programs capable of beating human champions of games like chess and go, DeepMind's AlphaFold AI bested the other 97 entrants in correctly predicting how 25 out of 43 proteins would fold in three dimensions. In comparison, the second-place winner was only able to solve three out of 43 proteins.