2023-05-25 07:31:23
Six years ago Giovanni Fabrizio Bignami, astrophysicist and popularizer disappeared. He discovered the star «Geminga». and directed the Italian Space Agency and the National Institute of Astrophysics
The daughter, Elena Giovanna Bignami, full professor of Anesthesia and Intensive Care, University of Parma; Artificial Intelligence expert of the Italian Society of Anesthesia Analgesia Resuscitation and Intensive Care, she remembers him like this.
2001 A Space Odyssey
Hi Papa Nanni, do you remember when Lele, you and I went to the cinema to watch «2001, A Space Odyssey»? We were 10 years old (Daniele and I are twins, but he is an engineer, of course). You two happy, excited, it seemed that you understood everything…I, who perhaps was starting to live with equivalences, was afraid of that film…for me, complex, distant, dark not only in colors, but also in the future. I really believed that among the peaks of Mont Blanc there was a (good) giant that he had tried to eat a mountain without cooking it well and for this he had lost a tooth, creating the “Giant’s Tooth”. He was my hero.
Mr. Qfwfq
Now, in 2023 we could be in that future that you imagined… What in the cinema to most might have seemed unattainable, but that you dad, for everyone else Professor Giovanni Fabrizio Bignami, already in 2011, after Kubrick and with a little ‘ less special effects, you had minutely begun to hypothesize. I remember, however, that you were not alone. To guide you, in the pages of «What remains to be discovered», he had arrived Mr. Qfwfq, the main fictional character of Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics, that you have chosen to write the book with you. A kind of virtual assistant, a primordial chatbot
, who accompanied you on the journey. He, a little green man who knows them all and suggests them with her telepathy, has helped you, sometimes even teasing you a little, to formulate the right questions.
The use of new technologies for health
A few days ago, me and a group of anesthesiologist colleagues from the AGATA group (study group in «Artificial IntelliGence in Anesthesia and Intensive Care» of the Italian Society of Anesthesia, Analgesia, Resuscitation and Intensive Care), we were reflecting on the use of new technologies in medicine, and in particular on how Artificial Intelligence can be integrated into our clinical discipline. We have come to believe that the solution is a hybrid model (artificial and human intelligence).
But then immediately the two of you came to my mind, you and Mr. Qfwfq, who, always respecting the PEG (Postulate of Galactic Evolution) you hypothesized about how human beings could feel emotions, accumulate experiences and make decisions (i.e. produce outputs) through the information of our five human senses (inputs). The vehicles up to now have always been the voice and the hands, through fascinating and obscure human neuronal circles (the brain), but you hypothesized a direct interface between the brain and hardware, a neuron-silicon contact, such as a USB porttherefore capable of processing a correct output, without spelling or interpretation errors and fast, in real time.
The «datathought»
What then dad we are not far away! That’s what an I could do todayntelligent Clinical Decision Support System for our patients. You hypothesized the «datathought», we today a sort of clinical «datamodel». But what do you and Mr. Qfwfq say? For you where everything is mathematics, will we ever be able to put numbers, machines and human neurons together? And will we be able to learn from all this? A subset of AIs,il Machine Learning
(whose job is to train computers to learn from input data and improve with experience, rather than just being programmed to do so), would say yes. Me, Vale, Marco and Jonathan (the liveliest part of the AGATA group) we are convinced that this future in medicine may already be the present, as you already proposed.
The bookworm and personalized medicine
With your nice assistant Qfwfq you made the comparison of when you had to go to the library to look up every single piece of information (like a «bookworm»). And this mouse has become the famous “mouse” of computers. This tool is one of the steps that has made it possible to simplify information searches; in fact, with a single gesture you can find (almost) everything you need. A click to find the information and sometimes the notion, even if the final elaboration of the thought is always human.
Which then, in selected and defined virtual spaces, is what we clinicians and biologists would need to finally do personalized medicine, specific to the individual patient. For example, having mega containers of data that can be a reservoir of real, complete and available information for the scientific community. I know, perhaps Mr. Qfwqf would make fun of us, but we (and fortunately scientists of greater calibre) are convinced of it.
Il cocktail CHNOPS
Oh yes, why as you hoped and theorized, incredible progress has also been made in biology, at the level of DNA and RNA. You and the little green man have missed (thankfully) terrible months characterized by a pandemic caused by a virus that perhaps not even Mr. Qfwfq would have ever imagined. Catastrophe for people, for the lives of many human beings, and for us resuscitators who participated on the front line, considering that the major manifestation of the infection is precisely respiratory. Fortunately, many of your human colleagues “academics of the Lincei” and not only have given us a great hand in facing this disastrous period.
Some scientists and Artificial Intelligence scholars have created tools with a similar name to the «CHNOPS» cocktail (Carbon, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Phosphorus and Sulfur which are the basis of general chemistry) which was your recipe for welcoming guests and taking them on your travels. ChatGPT, is an example of this. I know, there’s a nice assonance between the two sets of knowledge, but here the chemistry isn’t involved in the first instance, for now. These systems simulate conversations with humans using Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing (NPL) tools.
The Theory of Evolution of Everything
Sai, we also strongly believe that the “Theory of the Evolution of Everything” is valid also for AI and New Technologiesa theory that contains Darwin’s hypotheses (natural selection) and the hypotheses on the genesis of life. Even for the IT part, the simplest, most robust, easiest and most capable of giving results will continue; however, in each evolutionary phase we are always the managers (technicians and ethics), and this must necessarily lead to coexistence, indeed to complementarity.
For example, in Medicine, we can have these characteristics by putting together the skills of Clinical Physicians and Technical Engineers, creating an integrated clinical and management model. Two life forms that help each other, two universes that coexist, with distinct identities (man and machine), but common traits; also because the correct definition of life does not yet exist, and we are still in time to imagine it, create it and shape it according to its evolution.
Like the «star that is not there»
Mr. Qfwfq will be pleased with our progress happened in just over ten years? We have tried to give some answers to your questions, even if much remains to be discovered, and many doubts still remain unresolved. Why the more you know, or understand, the more doubts, and the solutions in medicine seem to be sometimes only temporary. But we will continue with method and scientific rigor to make our contribution. For us, for now, it’s all a theory, a hope, at times a dream or just a hypothesis in moments of greatest despair. … as for you who looked for your star, «Geminga» (a type of neutron star visible only in the gamma ray), which you then managed to find.
I am convinced that we too will make it, even without the Milanese pun, where “gh’è minga” means “there isn’t”. Looking up at the starry sky, towards the Dente del Gigante and Mont Blanc, we greet you and we will keep you informed on new discoveries and advances in science, both intelligent and otherwise. Can you greet the Giant, his dog and his cat (Gigacane and Gigagatto) for me?
May 25, 2023 (change May 25, 2023 | 07:30)
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