The Algos Are Coming For You

Trust is a foundational value for any civilization. When you arrive at your local Kwik-E-Mart, you want to know when you hand over your dollar bill, that your 99 cent can of Arizona Iced Tea isn’t filled with battery fluid and will be as fresh and saccharine as the first time you had it. The cashier on the other side of the counter wants to be assured that your dollar bill is an actual dollar bill rather than a counterfeit one that won’t work when he has to purchase the mango chutney his wife keeps hounding him to pick up on the drive home. Without trust, any number of human to human transactions would be fraught with doubt, fear, and one too many side-eyed glares.

A few weeks ago, I looked at an arterial blood gas reading in my hospital’s electronic medical record (EMR) for a patient whose care I took over when he suddenly and strikingly became short of breath. I immediately noticed something odd. The numbers were perfect. Usually, when something is catastrophically awry with someone’s biology, an arterial blood gas will let me know, the numbers in the EMR blaring a firetruck red so that I’ll be properly alarmed by the physiologic offense. But what I read was a normal blood pH, a normal carbon dioxide, and a normal oxygen saturation. There wasn’t a hint of lactic acidosis, an organic acid that reliably spills from tissues at times of profound stress.

Nikhil BarotJanuary 20, 2020artificial intelligence, algorithms, electronic medical record

A Date with Death

I woke up on the morning of December 3rd, 2040 with a sense of relief. Another night had passed and I was alive. I stepped outside for my morning walk. The fog was dense as steel and I could only see but a few feet in front of me. Twenty years earlier, my doctor had taken some blood tests, made me do some push ups, and checked my VO2 max on a stationary bike. She handed me a printout that late fall day. With 98% certainty, I would be dead by December 2040.

By the time I rounded the corner for the last half-mile back home, the fog had barely lifted. A car pulling out of a driveway screeched to a halt just a few feet in front of me. I leapt back. The driver shot a hand out and waved apologetically. I motioned for him to pass then clutched my arm. A shooting pain pierced the center of my chest. I felt the vessels in my neck engorge and my forehead cool. I fell to my knees as the world spun about, gasping my last breath as the end drew near, as my life left me.

Nikhil BarotSeptember 19, 2019death, extrapolation, artificial intelligence, illness

Modeling our Minds

Ever wonder what your brain is up to? There is a dazzlingly theatrical time-lapse clip of neurons in a petri dish recorded over the course of 170 hours that mesmerizes me every time I view it. They light up, bulk up, whisk about and connect with other neurons to form synapses. In concert, their behavior looks like a choreographed dance, all in an effort to create the neural pathways that relay the chemical signals that form conscious experience. The kinetic vibrancy of brain cells busy being brain cells reminds me of one of those vintage street scenes from New York where horse-drawn carriages trudge along, pedestrians jaywalk across the street, small crowds form to stare at the piece of technology documenting it all. We’ve seen this street scene reenacted in Hollywood period dramas, but is it possible to simulate the coordinated biological neural network that constitutes brain activity in silico?