With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment • Hacker News Board

Re: With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment

#11

Post by cortezdecoy » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 5:49 PM UTC

cratermoon wrote: post #9

edejong wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the state of AI in the 90's. AlphaGo Zero and AlphaZero have shown that it does not need to search exhaustively when it can search intelligently using reinforcement learning. The 'direction' is something the system learns and is not given by the devs.

Take out 'exhaustively', though, and everything parent comment said is correct. AI is just (big data + statistical inference) implemented in massively parallel ways using linear algebra.

"just" is always a weird modifier in these kinds of conversations. Most things can be reduced to "just" some basic operation(s). What is amazing is the complexity that emerges from those simple operations at scale.

Re: With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment

#12

Post by tomato-sauce » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 5:50 PM UTC

It feels like in the last few years I have been constantly hearing about new research showing “fun” drugs as cures to a wide array of medical conditions. There’s marijuana for chronic pain, mushrooms for depression, mdma for ptsd, and now ketamine. They are often talked about as if they have little or no harmful side effects. I’m glad we are moving away from the incredibly destructive drug policies that have been in place for so long but I fear the pendulum may be swinging too far the other way. The opioid epidemic was largely caused by the idea of them being non addictive being heavy pushed by the pharmaceuticals industry. Are we going to see similar harms from these drugs a few years after they gain more popularity? So far the evidence doesn’t show anything near this level of harm. I’m just skeptical of anything that seems too good to be true.

Re: With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment

#13

Post by nickthemagicman » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 5:54 PM UTC

tomato-sauce wrote: post #12

It feels like in the last few years I have been constantly hearing about new research showing “fun” drugs as cures to a wide array of medical conditions. There’s marijuana for chronic pain, mushrooms for depression, mdma for ptsd, and now ketamine. They are often talked about as if they have little or no harmful side effects. I’m glad we are moving away from the incredibly destructive drug policies that have been in…

What there a really are no or very few side effects?

Re: With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment

#14

Post by IBCNU » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

tartoran wrote: post #3

loceng wrote: post #2

"The tool, called mediKanren, scanned millions of biomedical abstracts hunting for relationships between existing compounds and the gene involved in the disease." Is this AI or someone put the effort into compiling a database and added automatic search function?

Reminds me of minikanren and I think this may be related

Yeah, I had the same thought. Also, these are two things that absolutely _should_ be together haha...

Re: With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment

#15

Post by shadowgovt » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 5:59 PM UTC

nickthemagicman wrote: post #13

tomato-sauce wrote: post #12

It feels like in the last few years I have been constantly hearing about new research showing “fun” drugs as cures to a wide array of medical conditions. There’s marijuana for chronic pain, mushrooms for depression, mdma for ptsd, and now ketamine. They are often talked about as if they have little or no harmful side effects. I’m glad we are moving away from the incredibly destructive drug policies that have been in…

What there a really are no or very few side effects?

(interpreting as "What if there really are no or very few side effects?")

That would be great, but it would be something we learn on the other side of controlled trials.

Re: With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment

#16

Post by IBCNU » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 6:01 PM UTC

nickthemagicman wrote: post #13

tomato-sauce wrote: post #12

It feels like in the last few years I have been constantly hearing about new research showing “fun” drugs as cures to a wide array of medical conditions. There’s marijuana for chronic pain, mushrooms for depression, mdma for ptsd, and now ketamine. They are often talked about as if they have little or no harmful side effects. I’m glad we are moving away from the incredibly destructive drug policies that have been in…

What there a really are no or very few side effects?

The idea of the pendulum swinging too far is a huge over-reaction. The pendulum has 40 years of swinging back to a "normal" state if you include the overprescribed industry of prescribing mood altering drugs to suburbanites, adderall, etc. Yes, the boomer and gen-x generations were raised in a lie: their doctors told them they could take drugs without side effects. However, this is now well known.

Re: With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment

#17

Post by narag » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 6:08 PM UTC

nickthemagicman wrote: post #13

tomato-sauce wrote: post #12

It feels like in the last few years I have been constantly hearing about new research showing “fun” drugs as cures to a wide array of medical conditions. There’s marijuana for chronic pain, mushrooms for depression, mdma for ptsd, and now ketamine. They are often talked about as if they have little or no harmful side effects. I’m glad we are moving away from the incredibly destructive drug policies that have been in…

What there a really are no or very few side effects?

Ketamine seems to be a commonly used drug in emergencies because it's a safer anesthetic than propofol when you don't know specifics about the patient and can't determine dosage.

Re: With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment

#18

Post by funnybeam » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 6:09 PM UTC

tomato-sauce wrote: post #12

It feels like in the last few years I have been constantly hearing about new research showing “fun” drugs as cures to a wide array of medical conditions. There’s marijuana for chronic pain, mushrooms for depression, mdma for ptsd, and now ketamine. They are often talked about as if they have little or no harmful side effects. I’m glad we are moving away from the incredibly destructive drug policies that have been in…

A lot of the “fun drugs” were originally used for medical purposes and only banned because people started using them for fun

Re: With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment

#19

Post by cratermoon » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 6:11 PM UTC

cortezdecoy wrote: post #11

cratermoon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take out 'exhaustively', though, and everything parent comment said is correct. AI is just (big data + statistical inference) implemented in massively parallel ways using linear algebra.

"just" is always a weird modifier in these kinds of conversations. Most things can be reduced to "just" some basic operation(s). What is amazing is the complexity that emerges from those simple operations at scale.

Granted that emergent behaviors are important. The reason for injecting "just" is to counter the AI hype. Imagine if the headline read "With a nudge from linear algebra, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment". Dropping the word AI in there, in addition to boosting the articles SEO, will suggest to those with a casual interest that his must be a big deal, because "I've heard so much about how AI is solving "

Re: With a nudge from AI, ketamine emerges as a potential rare disease treatment

#20

Post by wyre » Sat, Aug 07, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

tomato-sauce wrote: post #12

It feels like in the last few years I have been constantly hearing about new research showing “fun” drugs as cures to a wide array of medical conditions. There’s marijuana for chronic pain, mushrooms for depression, mdma for ptsd, and now ketamine. They are often talked about as if they have little or no harmful side effects. I’m glad we are moving away from the incredibly destructive drug policies that have been in…

Cannabis, psilocybin, and LSD have been used recreationally for decades with death rates approaching zero and there have been 0 cases of overdose. I was under the impression that these drugs were made illegal because their use promotes an anti capitalism mindset (see Timothy Leary being called the most dangerous man because of his research on LSD) and the medical industrial complex isnt able to extract as much money from them. I’ve never heard that opioids where once known to be non-addictive. Weren’t the Opium Wars started because China wanted Britain to stop selling them addictive opium?

It’s fair to be skeptical, but the data is not there. Cannabis, MDMA, and ketamine all have high potential for addiction and the latter two potential for abuse but it is possible to find Ketamine clinics for safe administration. I’m not familiar if there is public MDMA treatment available.