Ask HN: ML, DNN and Creativity in Battle vs. Covid-19?
(Vouching since this might be a good discussion to have.)<p>&gt; I see about Covid-19&#x2F;coronavirus is old-school standard statistics - no ML, no DNNs.<p>What you call &quot;old-school&quot; is also proven. The biomedical domain uses these models because they understand how they work, what abstractions went into them, and when they are reliable methods to lean on. Machine learning and DNNs are pretty useless without a specific task and good datasets (add large to that list for DNNs), very much like wet trials in the medical field.<p>If you look at the biomedical field in the last few months, lots of efforts already come together here that you might appreciate. Peer reviews of relevant papers are expedited, results are digitally disseminated around the world, cases are tracked with pretty unprecedented speed across bureaucratic borders.<p>&gt; Seriously, WTF happened to creativity? Where are the ML and DNN people?<p>Where they belong. Some help people in the field, others focus on their own research, some will definitely try to put their specific methods to the test in order to facilitate other efforts.<p>I realize that many people these days want to help but please, this is not the time to get your covid paper on arxiv just because. Just like we should call out people profiteering from this pandemic economically, we should strive against adding pure noise. Note that this shouldn&#x27;t hinder creativity but that is a completely separate thing. If you have a great idea to help, go ahead.<p>&gt; Where&#x27;s the &quot;artificial intelligence&quot; (b&#x2F;c there apparently isn&#x27;t enough of the real thing to solve this problem. Why isn&#x27;t more of the work done to date useful in finding solutions? Medical &quot;science&quot; has let us down.<p>Medical science is doing what they can, the presumption that a buzzword can do it better than people that dedicate their life to this is neither help-, nor respectful.