A study published in Nature has demonstrated how artificial intelligence (AI) research can drive and accelerate new scientific discoveries.

Alphabet subsidiary DeepMind has created a dedicated, interdisciplinary team to explore using AI to predict the 3D structure of a protein based solely on its genetic sequence.

Its system, AlphaFold, builds on prior research using large genomic datasets to predict protein structure.

Many diseases are linked to malformed protein, and predicting how chains of amino acids will fold into the 3D structure of a protein has challenged scientists for decades.

WHY IT MATTERS

The 3D models of proteins that AlphaFold generates are more accurate than those that have come before — marking significant progress on “the protein-folding problem”.

This could help researchers understand how the body works and design new cures for diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, cystic fibrosis and Huntington’s — where misfolded proteins are believed to play a role.

THE LARGER TREND

DeepMind has been heavily involved in the healthcare space, using its AI platform for diagnosis within organisations including the NHS.  

Another recent study published in Nature found that Google’s AI technology was more accurate in predicting breast cancer than mammograms.

Meanwhile a study published in Nature last year found that DeepMind’s Stream system was able to detect acute kidney injury (AKI) two days before it happens.

In August 2019, DeepMind’s strategic report revealed losses for the financial year of around $571 million (£470 million). Shortly afterwards, Google announced that the health team at DeepMind, was joining Google Health. 

ON THE RECORD

Pushmeet Kohli, research lead for the DeepMind science team, said: “Our aim at DeepMind is to solve the few but key fundamental questions in science that could unlock the solution to thousands more. Protein folding is one such question — predicting the 3D structure of proteins could help in our understanding of the body and how it works, enabling scientists to design new, effective cures for diseases more efficiently.”

Demis Hassabis, CEO and co-founder of DeepMind, said: “These early signs of progress, which build on decades of work by many experts in the field, demonstrate the potential of AI to help us master fundamental scientific problems, and I look forward to seeing where this research goes next.”

David Jones, head of the UCL Bioinformatics Group, who advised the team on parts of the project, said: “Experimental techniques to determine protein structures are time consuming and expensive, so there’s a huge demand for better computer algorithms to calculate the structures of proteins directly from the gene sequences which encode them, and DeepMind’s work on applying AI to this long-standing problem in molecular biology is a definite advance.”

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These are still early days for Cloud as globally, the enterprises still reserve 97 per cent of their IT spend for on-premises jobs and devote just 3 per cent to the Cloud. In India, the story is no different but with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) now driving Cloud, the year 2020 is going to witness more businesses in the country moving their workloads to the Cloud, according to the industry experts.

The Cloud market in India is poised to grow three-fold to $7.1 billion by 2022, according to a latest NASSCOM report.

According to Shailender Kumar, Regional Managing Director, Oracle India, even though we see Cloud taking centre-stage today, its adoption has to accelerate at a much faster rate in the country.

“Will our enterprises be ready? By 2025, 80 per cent of all enterprise workloads will move to the Cloud. AI will double productivity, automate customer engagement and will be an inherent feature in applications. Automation will become central to the success of corporations,” Kumar told IANS.

“We are heading into a next-generation Cloud model where organisations will demand access to new technologies, better security, improved price performance, and deep automation capabilities,” Kumar emphasized.

The country is still at the beginning of this titanic shift to the Cloud.

Public Cloud services revenue in India is projected to hit $2.4 billion in 2019 — an increase of 24.3 per cent from 2018, says Gartner.

Although India’s revenue will only represent 1.2 per cent of the global public Cloud services this year, the country ranks among the nine nations whose growth rate will be higher than the global average growth rate going forward.

“I believe that Cloud is a superpower with the potential to change the world for the better. It holds the key to almost every major new technology including mobility, AI and ML and IoT and Edge,” said Pradeep Nair, Vice President and Managing Director, VMware India.

AI is already making its presence felt across domains ranging from healthcare to manufacturing to agriculture.

“I expect this trend to intensify further as India pushes ahead in its cloud adoption journey that will, in turn, drive growth within the AI space. Together, these two potent technologies hold the power to transform billions of lives for the better,” Nair noted.

Cloud application services (SaaS) is on pace to be the fastest-growing market segment in India in 2019, accounting for nearly half of total public Cloud services revenue year-over-year (YoY).

According to Ramkumar Narayanan, Vice President and Managing Site Director- VMware India R&D, research indicates that AI will account for almost 50 per cent of total Public Cloud services revenue by 2025.

“The next year will see Indian enterprises increasingly exploring Cloud-powered AI solutions to drive productivity, resiliency and profitability. Cloud and AI will underpin every major technology trend from 5G-powered mobility to intrinsic security, cloud native applications, Blockchain and more,” said Narayanan.

The first chapter of enterprise digital transformation in the last decade was characterized by the rapid adoption of Cloud-based technologies and data from more sources to serve clients better, provide a competitive edge and accelerate growth. Still, only 20 per cent of workloads have moved to the cloud.

“Adoption of cloud technologies within Indian organizations will be on the rise in the next few years, with a majority of them moving towards a Hybrid multi-cloud strategy starting 2020 onwards”, said Vikas Arora, Vice President, Cloud & Cognitive Software & Services, IBM India/South Asia.

“Automation using AI to manage Hybrid multi-cloud complexities, enhanced focus on security, adoption of Kubernetes and Containerization to modernize infrastructure and accelerate application modernization and lastly modernizing the Information Architecture to create self-service data platforms will be the key trends for 2020,” Arora added.

According to Alok Ohrie, President and Managing Director, Dell Technologies, India, the idea that public and private clouds can and will co-exist becomes a clear reality in 2020.

“Multi-cloud IT strategies supported by hybrid cloud architectures will play a key role in ensuing organizations have better data management and visibility, while also ensuring that their data remains accessible and secure. But private clouds won’t simply exist within the heart of the data centre,” Ohrie stressed.

As 5G and edge deployments continue to rollout, private hybrid clouds will exist at the edge to ensure the real-time visibility and management of data everywhere it lives, he added. (IANS).

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