Data Science Insider: September 16th, 2022

In This Week’s SuperDataScience Newsletter: Overusing ML. Top Universities Offer Free Data Science Classes. DeepMind Researcher Warns of AI ‘Existential Catastrophe.’ Robot Taught to Laugh. Stephen Marche On God and Machines. Cheers, - The SuperDataScience Team P.S. Have friends and colleagues who could benefit from these weekly updates? Send them to [this link]( to subscribe to the Data Science Insider. --------------------------------------------------------------- [Overusing ML]( brief: This paper entitled ‘Steps to Avoid Overuse and Misuse of Machine Learning in Clinical Research’ has been published in the journal Nature which advocates for the proper application of AI in healthcare and warns of dangers when ML is mismanaged. Associate Professor Nan Liu, the senior author, from the Centre for Quantitative Medicine and Health Services & Systems Research Programme at Duke-NUS Medical School, said: "Many believe ML will revolutionise healthcare because machines make choices more objectively than humans. But without proper oversight, ML models may do more harm than good. If, through ML, we uncover patterns that we otherwise would not see […we] should be able to explain how the algorithms got there, to allow for checks and balances." The researchers draw attention to the fact that guidelines regulate the use of ML in clinical research but do not ask whether its use is appropriate in the first place. Why this is important: ML has made huge waves in healthcare but as data scientists, we must always be aware of the ethical issues surrounding its use, and carefully consider whether it is always the best course of action. [Click here to learn more!]( [Top Universities Offer Free Data Science Classes]( brief: In this article, Fortune has compiled a list of seven online courses for prospective data science workers which are offered, for free, by top universities. These courses include Harvard University offering a course called Data Science: Linear Regression, Columbia University offering Machine Learning for Data Science, and Analytics, the University of Michigan teaching Data Science Ethics, University of California–Irvine: Intro to Analytic Thinking, Data Science, and Data Mining, and MIT providing an Introduction to Computational Thinking and Data Science. These courses are available to anyone with a computer and can be easily accessed from home, at a time which suits you. A master’s degree is still a requirement for many companies but the content of the courses is generally pitched at beginners and offers a good way for those who are potentially interested in a data science career to dip their toes in the water. Why this is important: Education is always going to be important for those who are looking for a successful career in data science. Here at SuperDataScience, we offer a variety of options that will provide in-depth education for those who seek to expand their knowledge. These free courses, however, offer the opportunity to sample a small piece of basic teachings from top institutions. [Click here to read on!]( [DeepMind Researcher Warns of AI ‘Existential Catastrophe’]( In brief: Researchers from the University of Oxford and Google’s AI division, DeepMind, have published a paper in peer-reviewed AI Magazine, in which they claim that there is a high probability of advanced forms of AI becoming “existentially dangerous to life on Earth.” The research paper is centred around the question of what would happen if you left AI to achieve the goals it has set and allowed it to create its own tests and hypotheses in an attempt to achieve it. It found that, for example, an AI may wish to "eliminate potential threats" and decide to "use all available energy" in order to secure control over its reward. The research found that the results would be disastrous as “a sufficiently advanced artificial agent would likely intervene in the provision of goal-information, with catastrophic consequences," meaning that devastation is likely to occur in the near future. Why this is important: The headlines to this story may be concerning but what we can learn from this story is the importance of setting strong goals and boundaries when writing algorithms. [Click here to discover more!]( [Robot Taught to Laugh]( In brief: Researchers at Kyoto University in Japan have used AI to teach a robot how to laugh at jokes. It has also been taught about appropriate laughter – and to differentiate between quiet chuckles and huge belly laughs. Writing in the journal Frontiers in Robotics and AI, the researchers describe working on the project in a bid to make robots more human. The laughing robot, which is called Erica is tasked with aiming to improve natural conversations between people and AI systems. Lead author Dr Koji Inoue, an assistant professor at Kyoto University in the Department of Intelligence Science and Technology, said: "One of the important functions of conversational AI is empathy, Conversation is, of course, multimodal, not just responding correctly. So, we decided that one way a robot can empathise with users is to share their laughter, which you cannot do with a text-based chatbot." Why this is important: As is so often the case with these stories, we realise that through creating artificial intelligence, we actually become closer to identifying what really makes us human. [Click here to see the full picture!]( [Stephen Marche On God and Machines]( In brief: In this essay from The Atlantic, Canadian author Stephen Marche offers a thought-provoking contemplation on how our increased use of technology may bring us closer to God. Marche says: “Technology is moving into realms that were considered, for millennia, divine mysteries. AI is transforming writing and art—the divine mystery of creativity. It is bringing back the dead—the divine mystery of resurrection. It is moving closer to imitations of consciousness—the divine mystery of reason. It is piercing the heart of how language works between people—the divine mystery of ethical relation.” He argues that the technological advances that will change our everyday experiences will look very different from those imaged in science fiction films but will be just as miraculous and magical as anything that Hollywood could dream up, quoting Arthur C. Clarke’s: “Technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic.” Why this is important: This article is a rather beautiful read that really captures the divine which can possibly be found within the ML or natural language processing that we are surrounded by. [Click here to find out more!]( [Super Data Science podcast]( this week's [Super Data Science Podcast](, Zhamak Dehghani, the empathetic technologist who coined the term “data mesh” joins to explain what a data mesh is, and how its approach towards secure interconnectivity will help solve a roster of data-led business problems." --------------------------------------------------------------- What is the Data Science Insider? This email is a briefing of the week's most disruptive, interesting, and useful resources curated by the SuperDataScience team for Data Scientists who want to take their careers to the next level. Want to take your data science skills to the next level? Check out the [SuperDataScience platform]( and sign up for membership today! Know someone who would benefit from getting The Data Science Insider? 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