🤖 Coca-Cola’s A.I. art, India’s AI ambitions, and the future of drugs

3/22/23

Author

Neon Pulse Team
March 22, 2023

Good morning and welcome to the latest edition of neonpulse!

Here's what we have for you today:

  • Coca-Cola’s AI art

  • India’s AI Ambitions

  • A.I. drug development

Coca-Cola’s A.I. Art

In what’s sure to cause a viral marketing sensation, Coca-Cola has introduced an AI-powered tool allowing digital creators to make artwork based on the companies most iconic images.

Powered by OpenAI’s latest DALL-E and ChatGPT systems, digital creatives from around the world can submit their Coca-Cola inspired artwork to the company with the chance to be featured on the company’s digital billboards in New York’s Time Square and London’s Piccadilly Circus.

“It’s an experiment to see where co-creation can take us,” said Pratik Thakar, Global Head of Creative Strategy. “This gives digital artists the unique opportunity to play in a custom-created sandbox, and democratizes both our brand iconography and highest-profile advertising assets.”

The company’s “Create Real Magic” campaign is the first initiative to come out of Coca-Cola’s new partnership with Bain, with the goal of helping the company “identify and realize the full potential and maximum value of AI.”

“Real artists, actual humans, are using AI technology, which is algorithmic and mathematical, to create an output that’s truly magical,” Thakar said.

You can enter your own artwork into the competition here.

India’s A.I. Ambitions

A recent report by tech staffing firm TeamLease Digital is showing a booming demand for workers with A.I. related skills, with a particularly high demand for data scientists and machine learning engineers.

“The AI revolution is transforming the job market, creating an urgent need for skilled professionals who can design, develop, and implement cutting-edge AI technologies,” said Sunil Chemmankotil, CEO of TeamLease Digital.

India is taking a proactive approach to the increased demand for AI talent, recently announcing the creation of “AI Centers of Excellence” at three of the top educational institutions in the country to help expand the country’s AI talent pool.

“Leading industry players will partner in conducting research and developing cutting-edge applications in the areas of agriculture, health, and sustainable cities. This will galvanize an effective ecosystem and nurture quality human resources in the field," said finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

While India is currently one of the leading suppliers of AI talent, with a 2022 report showing the country producing 16% of the world’s AI talent pool, the new initiatives being taken by the government are sure to expand the country’s market share of AI talent considerably.

You can read more about India’s AI ambitions in a 2022 Bain & Company report here.

A.I. Drug Development

While there are thousands of diseases that affect humans, modern medicine only has effective treatments for small number of them.

Yet recent advancements in AI technology are opening up a entirely new world of drug development, one that will allow us to create novel treatments for a wide array of diseases in a fraction of the time.

Harnessing the power of AI drug discovery platform Pharma.AI, a team of researchers from the University of Toronto were able to create a new potential cancer treatment drug in less than 30 days, a significant breakthrough for a drug discovery process that typically takes years.

“This study is further evidence of the capacity for AI to transform the drug discovery process with enhanced speed, efficiency, and accuracy,” said Michael Levitt, PhD, Nobel laureate in Chemistry and professor of structural biology at Stanford University. “We’re on the cusp of a new era of AI-powered drug discovery.”

Below is the process the researchers followed:

  • Using a machine learning algorithm, researchers scanned a database of over 1.4 million compounds to identify compounds that were likely to be effective based on their chemical structure

  • The team synthesized the top 20 compounds, testing them in-vitro and isolating one compound (TH5427) that was highly effective in inhibiting MTH1, a protein critical for cancer cell survival

  • The researchers then tested TH5427 in mouse models of cancer, finding that it was highly effective in slowing tumor growth.

Like magic, in a matter of 30 days, the researchers were able to isolate a compound that has potential to help treat a variety of cancers, including breast, lung, and pancreatic cancer.

And while we’re still in the early stages of AI-driven drug research, this new study shows the incredible potential of AI to accelerate the drug discovery process and to revolutionize the treatment of disease.

You can read more about how the researchers were able to accomplish this breakthrough here.

A.I. Resources

This is an all new section for the newsletter, so if you have any thoughts or feedback as to what types of resources you would find helpful, please let us know by replying to this email!

  • Additional reading

  • Presentations

    • Nvidia CEO Keynote Speech on the future of AI - YouTube

  • Tools

    • Turn Selfies into Professional Headshots with Secta

    • Generate apps from text with FlutterFlow

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