Will the right storm of probably life-changing, synthetic intelligence-driven well being care and the need to extend income via subscription fashions alienate susceptible sufferers?
For the third 12 months in a row, MIT’s Envisioning the Future of Computing Prize requested college students to explain, in 3,000 phrases or fewer, how developments in computing may form human society for the higher or worse. All entries had been eligible to win numerous money prizes.
Impressed by current analysis on the better impact microbiomes have on total well being, MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography and Utilized Ocean Science and Engineering PhD candidate Annaliese Meyer created the idea of “B-Bots,” an artificial bacterial mimic designed to manage intestine biomes and activated by Bluetooth.
For the competition, which challenges MIT college students to articulate their musings for what a future pushed by advances in computing holds, Meyer submitted a piece of speculative fiction about how recipients of a revolutionary new health-care expertise discover their therapy in jeopardy with the introduction of a subscription-based pay mannequin.
In her successful paper, titled “(Pre/Sub)scribe,” Meyer chronicles the utilization of B-Bots from the attitude of each their creator and a B-Bots person named Briar. They have fun the results of the complement, serving to them handle vitamin deficiencies and continual situations like acid reflux disease and irritable bowel syndrome. Meyer says that the introduction of a B-Bots subscription mannequin “appeared like an ideal alternative to hopefully clarify that in a for-profit health-care system, even medical advances that may, in idea, be revolutionary for human well being can find yourself inflicting extra hurt than good for the many individuals on the shedding aspect of the large wealth disparity in fashionable society.”
As a Canadian, Meyer has skilled the variations between the well being care techniques in the USA and Canada. She recounts her mom’s current most cancers therapies, emphasizing the fee and protection of therapies in British Columbia when in comparison with the U.S.
Other than a cautionary story of fairness within the American well being care system, Meyer hopes readers take away an extra scientific message on the complexity of intestine microbiomes. Impressed by her thesis work in ocean metaproteomics, Meyer says, “I believe lots about when and why microbes produce totally different proteins to adapt to environmental modifications, and the way that will depend on the remainder of the microbial neighborhood and the alternate of metabolic merchandise between organisms.”
Meyer had hoped to take part within the earlier 12 months’s contest, however the time constraints of her lab work put her submission on maintain. Now within the midst of thesis work, she noticed the competition as a manner so as to add some selection to what she was writing whereas retaining engaged along with her scientific pursuits. Nonetheless, writing has all the time been a ardour. “I wrote lots as a child (‘writer’ really typically preceded ‘scientist’ as my dream job whereas I used to be in elementary faculty), and I nonetheless write fiction in my spare time,” she says.
Named the winner of the $10,000 grand prize, Meyer says the essay and presentation preparation had been extraordinarily rewarding.
“The possibility to discover a brand new subject space which, although associated to my area, was undoubtedly out of my consolation zone, actually pushed me as a author and a scientist. It acquired me studying papers I’d by no means have discovered earlier than, and digging into ideas that I’d barely ever encountered. (Did I’ve any actual understanding of the patent course of previous to this? Completely not.) The presentation dinner itself was a ton of enjoyable; it was nice to each be capable of have fun with my buddies and colleagues in addition to meet individuals from a bunch of various fields and departments round MIT.”
Envisioning the way forward for the computing prize
Co-sponsored by the Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing (SERC), a cross-cutting initiative of the MIT Schwarzman Faculty of Computing and the College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS), with assist from MAC3 Philanthropies, the competition this 12 months attracted 65 submissions from undergraduate and graduate college students throughout varied majors, together with mind and cognitive sciences, economics, electrical engineering and pc science, physics, anthropology, and others.
Caspar Hare, affiliate dean of SERC and professor of philosophy, launched the prize in 2023. He says that the thing of the prize was “to encourage MIT college students to consider what they’re doing, not simply when it comes to advancing computing-related applied sciences, but additionally when it comes to how the choices they make could or could not work to our collective profit.”
He emphasised that the Envisioning the Way forward for Computing prize will proceed to stay “fascinating and vital” to the MIT neighborhood. There are plans in place to tweak subsequent 12 months’s contest, providing extra alternatives for workshops and steerage for these considering submitting essays.
“Everybody is worked up to proceed this for so long as it stays related, which could possibly be ceaselessly,” he says, suggesting that in years to come back the prize may give us a sequence of historic snapshots of what computing-related applied sciences MIT college students discovered most compelling.
“Computing-related expertise goes to be remodeling and altering the world. MIT college students will stay an enormous a part of that.”
Crowning a winner
As a part of a two-stage analysis course of, all of the submitted essays had been reviewed anonymously by a committee of college members from the school, SHASS, and the Division of City Research and Planning. The judges moved ahead three finalists based mostly on the papers that had been deemed to be probably the most articulate, thorough, grounded, imaginative, and galvanizing.
In early Could, a live awards ceremony was held the place the finalists had been invited to present 20-minute shows on their entries and took questions from the viewers. Almost 140 MIT neighborhood members, relations, and buddies attended the ceremony in assist of the finalists. The viewers members and judging panel requested the presenters difficult and considerate questions on the societal affect of their fictional computing applied sciences.
A ultimate tally, which comprised 75 % of their essay rating and 25 % of their presentation rating, decided the winner.
This 12 months’s judging panel included:
- Marzyeh Ghassemi, affiliate professor in electrical engineering and pc science;
- Caspar Hare, affiliate dean of SERC and professor of philosophy;
- Jason Jackson, affiliate professor in political economic system and concrete planning;
- Brad Skow, professor of philosophy;
- Armando Photo voltaic-Lezama, affiliate director and chief working officer of the MIT Pc Science and Synthetic Intelligence Laboratory; and
- Nikos Trichakis, interim affiliate dean of SERC and affiliate professor of operations administration.
The judges additionally awarded $5,000 to the 2 runners-up: Martin Staadecker, a graduate pupil within the Know-how and Coverage Program within the Institute for Information, Methods, and Society, for his essay on a fictional token-based system to trace fossil fuels, and Juan Santoyo, a PhD candidate within the Division of Mind and Cognitive Sciences, for his brief story of a field-deployed AI designed to assist the psychological well being of troopers in instances of battle. As well as, eight honorable mentions had been acknowledged, with every receiving a money prize of $1,000.
