Bioinformatics scientist and expert Dr. Pierre Baldi who’s a trailblazer in the field that fuses AI and biology shared cutting-edge research insights on The AI Purity Podcast. Dr. Pierre Baldi currently sits as the director of the Institute for Genomics and Bioinformatics at the University of California, Irvine. Over the years, Dr. Baldi’s pioneering work in deep learning and AI has opened new frontiers in learning and understanding complex biological systems.
In this episode of The AI Purity Podcast, Dr. Baldi talks about his career journey, gives us insight into bioinformatics applications and AI integration, and discusses the unique challenges in applying AI or machine learning to understanding genomic data.
Learn about the ethical implications of using AI technology in biology, what is bioinformatics used for, recent research applications from Dr. Pierre Baldi, and more about AI Purity’s elite AI text detection capabilities.
A History Into Dr. Pierre Baldi’s Career Journey
Dr. Pierre Baldi transitioned into a career in computer science and machine learning because of his keen interest in understanding intelligence and the human brain. This interest was coupled with an affinity for mathematics which he took as his undergraduate degree along with psychology. “I didn’t know exactly in which direction to go or how to approach the questions that interested me”, Dr. Baldi shares on why he took that dual degree.
After completing his Diplôme d’études approfondies (DEA) in Paris, he moved to the United States for his PhD at Caltech. He encountered an influential professor during his time there who was pioneering work in neural networks and machine learning. “I immediately understood that was the area of research I wanted to focus on,” Dr. Baldi says and he has since worked in neural networks, deep learning, and AI.
To the untrained, it might seem like there’s a dichotomy between computer science and biology but Dr. Pierre says, “Biological systems are all about computing. You can view a single cell is in many ways a computer.” He continues that, “a single cell is already a very sophisticated computer that computes at every second of time.” Though computing and biology seem to be a very hybrid domain Dr. Pierre points out the analogy wherein deep learning and AI draw inspiration from the human brain. After all, artificial intelligence does emulate human intelligence as best it can. With that technology powered by computing systems, Dr. Pierre says the better AI is built, the better it helps scientists understand biological systems and biological data.
What Is Bioinformatics?
Bioinformatics compared to other fields of research and study in science is “relatively new” and is still an “evolving discipline” according to the Genomics Education Programme. At its core, it combines computer science and biology to help scientists analyze or interpret biological data. By leveraging computational tools, scientists can analyze and interpret a vast amount of biological data that would take a long time to do manually in a more efficient way. An example of this technology being applied to healthcare is drug discovery, a process that would usually take a decade or longer and has become more efficient thanks to biotechnology.
Bioinformatics became an indispensable tool in modern biological research during the 1990s when the Human Genome Project began. Scientists were able to uncover mysteries that were hidden in DNA sequences. They were able to identify genes and even compare genomes across different species. Dr. Pierre Baldi explains that when the Human Genome Project began, it was meant to sequence the entire genome of a human being. This experiment was done over a period of 10 years. After the complete sequence of a human’s DNA, the data expressed is very long consisting of around 3 billion of only 4 alphabetical letters, ACGT. “It looks very cryptic,” Dr. Pierre says, “it’s not something that you can read as a human.” This is where machine learning algorithms, deep learning, and statistics come in to make sense of these sequences and to answer questions like how these genes have evolved over time across different species and so much more.
This field of study has extended far beyond analyzing genomics. If you’re wondering, “What is bioinformatics used for?” besides analyzing genomic and biological data, it can also be used to analyze protein structures, study gene expressions, and even aid in drug discovery to find personalized medicine.
Deep Learning, Machine Learning, and NLP in Biology
Dr. Pierre shares an example of how deep learning techniques are integrated into biological research. In his line of research, Dr. Pierre has been studying circadian rhythms. A person’s circadian rhythm is fundamentally linked to their biology. Dr. Pierre says, “Every cell in your body is oscillating on a 24-hour basis.” Based on this biological clock, certain chemicals and genes are activated. Earlier forms of organisms like cyanobacteria which similarly to plants, use sunlight for photosynthesis also operate based on a circadian schedule. This trait is inherent in all living cells.
Along with his team of bioinformatics specialists, Dr. Pierre has developed methods and databases to analyze these biological oscillations. They create databases that are analyzed using deep learning and determine if some specific genes or proteins exhibit circadian rhythms or behaviors. According to Dr. Pierre, the circadian rhythm is highly adaptable. “If you change your time, if you change your diet, how much you exercise…Anything you change in your behavior, or in your environment, or chemically will change the oscillations somewhere in your body.”
AI methods can now also be utilized to address complex biological problems. The recent advancements in machine learning and natural language processing like GPT-4 can be applied to understanding biological data. These AI models are trained on vast amounts of text data and they can now be adapted to analyze biological sequences like genomes, proteins, and RNA, data that can be represented as text. By training large language models, scientists can leverage AI techniques and technology to design new proteins that have specific functions.
Dr. Pierre says “AI is reshaping all technologies and all areas of science. So, it’s being applied everywhere, and biotechnology is no different.”
AI detectors like AI Purity are like large language models that also use natural language processing to detect similarities between actual human-written text and AI-generated text. AI Purity has trained its model on a vast amount of data to provide the best AI text detection.
The Ethical Implications of Applying AI In Biology
When asked about the ethical implications of using AI in biological research and healthcare, Dr. Pierre says that there are broader implications to AI that extend beyond healthcare and biology.
He drew parallels between artificial intelligence and natural intelligence. “If you think about it, natural intelligence, our intelligence is actually very dangerous”, Dr. Pierre says, emphasizing the importance of placing a lot of measures to counterbalance and prevent both human and artificial intelligence from doing too much damage. He says all it takes is to look at human history to see how much damage humans can do and with artificial intelligence being modeled after natural intelligence, the probability of it doing similar damage should be taken into account. As humans, we have ethical senses, learn from each other, and follow societal laws and commandments to maintain a safe society. For AI models, analogous measures are being developed like constitutional AI, consistent feedback from humans, and the creation of legal frameworks to ensure AI is compliant with safety and ethical standards.
In building AI systems, it is necessary to conduct research especially when AI is being integrated into sensitive areas like healthcare where data privacy issues can arise. AI Purity prides itself on a platform that prioritizes responsible and ethical AI use above all. We have made our tool accessible and specially tailored for students and educators. As an AI tech company, we understand better than most the importance of using this technology responsibly which we will continue to pioneer.
Listen To The AI Purity Podcast
Learn more about bioinformatics and the application of AI systems in the realms of science from the expert himself Dr. Pierre Baldi on the latest episode of The AI Purity Podcast. He encourages everyone to understand AI and how the world is adapting to this new technology. It’s a powerful tool that has both good and bad potentials and it is up to the people to be educated so they can make proper and informed decisions.
For all your AI text detection needs, use AI Purity to get fast AI text detection with more premium features. For other ethical AI discussions, tune in to the next episodes of The AI Purity podcast or revisit our past episode, in Informatics, AI in Healthcare, & Digital Resilience in the AI Age with David Wild.