📊 EV’s charts of the week #4 β

Protein folding; cross-border data; 1.5°C; college debt; anosmia

Hi,
We’re experimenting with length and breadth. Slightly more to read this week. We are also experimenting with hashtags by each chart. We might make these clickable in the future. Comments are open for you to discuss with other members, building on the success of our Friday discussions.

Azeem

AI for scientific discovery

DeepMind announced a breakthrough in the area of protein folding, which uses a protein’s DNA sequence to predict its three-dimensional structure. With this new ability, we can better understand the building blocks of cells and enable advanced drug discovery. This is a huge scientific and industrial milestone. Between 2018 and 2020, Alphafold has gone from impressive to superhuman – and proving that machine learning approaches can solve the folding problem.

This could an “Imagenet moment” that will trigger a wave of investment and innovation. Back in 2011, computer vision was stuck in the doldrums, not really good enough to generalise and be present everywhere. Then in 20…