From an article by Jon Markman at thestreet.com:
Using data, machine learning and AI, Alphabet managers are incubating vibrant new businesses in pharma and tech. One or more of these will become exciting stand-alone businesses.
This might seem a particularly bad time to be investing in big tech.
President Trump said Tuesday morning that his administration would look into accusations that Google has been secretly working with the Chinese military. The charge came from Peter Thiel, a PayPal (PYPL – Get Report) co-founder and strong supporter of the president.
On the other hand, Bloomberg reported Tuesday that DeepMind, the artificial-intelligence arm of Alphabet, (GOOGL – Get Report) might be on the cusp of a major breakthrough in the way new drugs are discovered.
It’s an important innovation. It’s hiding inside the search giant. And it couldn’t come at a better time.
This business is on to something really big. Using data, machine learning and AI, Alphabet managers are incubating vibrant new businesses with innovative business models. One or more of these will become exciting stand-alone businesses.
Some analysts are already doing sum-of-the-parts analyses and they like what they see.
A Jefferies analyst pegged the value of Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving-car business, at $250 billion in December 2018, according to a story at Business Insider.
Alphabet’s market capitalization is $798 billion, with units including YouTube, Google Search, Google Cloud, Android, the Nest security camera and peripheral businesses, Google Capital, and Stadia, its new video game streaming service set to launch in November.
Together, these parts are probably worth well over $1 trillion.
Until now, the business opportunity for DeepMind was not even on investors’ radar.
The subsidiary has its roots in DeepMind Technologies, a British AI startup that was making progress teaching computers the quirks of human short-term memory. Alphabet acquired the business in 2014.
Two years later, its custom AlphaGo code was so advanced that it became the first computer program to defeat a human in a match of Go, the ancient Chinese strategy game. That human happened to be Lee Sedol, the 18-time world champion.
At the CASP13 meeting in Mexico in December 2018, DeepMind was at it again. This time its human challengers were the brightest minds in biology. The task was predicting the shapes of proteins.
Understanding these structures is important because they govern how diseases form. The problem is there are more possible protein shapes than there are atoms in the universe, Bloomberg notes.
The math has vexed computational biologists for the past 25 years. They have been trying to build more predictive software models for protein folding, the process that leads to proteins taking three-dimensional shapes.
Despite its limited experience with folding, AlphaFold, DeepMind’s entrant, predicted the most accurate structure for 25 out of 43 proteins, taking the top spot over 98 participating teams, according to a report in the Guardian.
Image Credit: Google AI
News This Week
Study Shows Brain Signals Only Matter if They Arrive on Time
Signals are processed only if they reach the brain during brief receptive cycles. This timing mechanism explains how attention filters information and may inform therapies and brain-inspired technologies. It has long been recognized that [...]
Does Space-Time Really Exist?
Is time something that flows — or just an illusion? Exploring space-time as either a fixed “block universe” or a dynamic fabric reveals deeper mysteries about existence, change, and the very nature of reality. [...]
Unlocking hidden soil microbes for new antibiotics
Most bacteria cannot be cultured in the lab-and that's been bad news for medicine. Many of our frontline antibiotics originated from microbes, yet as antibiotic resistance spreads and drug pipelines run dry, the soil [...]
By working together, cells can extend their senses beyond their direct environment
The story of the princess and the pea evokes an image of a highly sensitive young royal woman so refined, she can sense a pea under a stack of mattresses. When it comes to [...]
Overworked Brain Cells May Hold the Key to Parkinson’s
Scientists at Gladstone Institutes uncovered a surprising reason why dopamine-producing neurons, crucial for smooth body movements, die in Parkinson’s disease. In mice, when these neurons were kept overactive for weeks, they began to falter, [...]
Old tires find new life: Rubber particles strengthen superhydrophobic coatings against corrosion
Development of highly robust superhydrophobic anti-corrosion coating using recycled tire rubber particles. Superhydrophobic materials offer a strategy for developing marine anti-corrosion materials due to their low solid-liquid contact area and low surface energy. However, [...]
This implant could soon allow you to read minds
Mind reading: Long a science fiction fantasy, today an increasingly concrete scientific goal. Researchers at Stanford University have succeeded in decoding internal language in real time thanks to a brain implant and artificial intelligence. [...]
A New Weapon Against Cancer: Cold Plasma Destroys Hidden Tumor Cells
Cold plasma penetrates deep into tumors and attacks cancer cells. Short-lived molecules were identified as key drivers. Scientists at the Leibniz Institute for Plasma Science and Technology (INP), working with colleagues from Greifswald University Hospital and [...]
This Common Sleep Aid May Also Protect Your Brain From Alzheimer’s
Lemborexant and similar sleep medications show potential for treating tau-related disorders, including Alzheimer’s disease. New research from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis shows that a commonly used sleep medication can restore normal sleep patterns and [...]
Sugar-Coated Nanoparticles Boost Cancer Drug Efficacy
A team of researchers at the University of Mississippi has discovered that coating cancer treatment carrying nanoparticles in a sugar-like material increases their treatment efficacy. They reported their findings in Advanced Healthcare Materials. Over a tenth of breast [...]
Nanoparticle-Based Vaccine Shows Promise in Fighting Cancer
In a study published in OncoImmunology, researchers from the German Cancer Research Center and Heidelberg University have created a therapeutic vaccine that mobilizes the immune system to target cancer cells. The researchers demonstrated that virus peptides combined [...]
Quantitative imaging method reveals how cells rapidly sort and transport lipids
Lipids are difficult to detect with light microscopy. Using a new chemical labeling strategy, a Dresden-based team led by André Nadler at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) and [...]
Ancient DNA reveals cause of world’s first recorded pandemic
Scientists have confirmed that the Justinian Plague, the world’s first recorded pandemic, was caused by Yersinia pestis, the same bacterium behind the Black Death. Dating back some 1,500 years and long described in historical texts but [...]
“AI Is Not Intelligent at All” – Expert Warns of Worldwide Threat to Human Dignity
Opaque AI systems risk undermining human rights and dignity. Global cooperation is needed to ensure protection. The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has changed how people interact, but it also poses a global risk to human [...]
Nanomotors: Where Are They Now?
First introduced in 2004, nanomotors have steadily advanced from a scientific curiosity to a practical technology with wide-ranging applications. This article explores the key developments, recent innovations, and major uses of nanomotors today. A [...]
Study Finds 95% of Tested Beers Contain Toxic “Forever Chemicals”
Researchers found PFAS in 95% of tested beers, with the highest levels linked to contaminated local water sources. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), better known as forever chemicals, are gaining notoriety for their ability [...]
Leave A Comment