But I'm still skeptical given how frequently various respiratory viruses mutate. But then again they are the experts so hopefully they found something key.

We're the disease.

here, even in a headline.

... "machine learning", which has led to a number of discoveries in the physical sciences, but which is not Large Language Model AI. If anything, it's closer to classical numerical curve-fitting than to "AI" as such.

The scientific part of “AI” is not a bs scam, and, is actually helping contribute to our scientific knowledge by doing what computers do well - analyzing data.

globe and then used artificial intelligence to design an antigen, the element within a virus that the immune system learns to attack, with “features common to this whole group of viruses, including ones that haven’t emerged yet”, the scientists said.

It was delivered using a high-pressure jet of liquid that can penetrate the skin, rather than a needle.

snip

or generative AI, the type of AI we've been hearing the most about for the last 3-1/2 years thanks to ChatGPT, Claude, etc.

AI bros pushing genAI often try to confuse the types of AI and make it appear that genAI is behind scientific and medical advances, but that's rarely the case.

June 2026 Cambridge article mentioning machine learning: https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/new-universal-vaccine-technology-could-protect-us-from-future-virus-outbreaks

Journal article on the study: https://www.journalofinfection.com/article/S0163-4453(26)00084-8/fulltext
(DU's software breaks the link above, so you'll have to copy it to the address bar.)

of archaeological sites, design of enzyme inhibitors, and other "data intensive" investigations -- plus others whose details I don't recall -- benefiting from machine learning. I've slowly come to realize that confusing people on what "AI" really is is probably a deliberate ploy -- machine learning has some real successes to its credit, but LLMs have delivered one boner after another, many of them quite dangerous, even potentially disastrous. Not good for IPOs, I'm sure ! So, dilute/camouflage the bad news with genuine (but not really related) good news, and suddenly AI can be made to look more worthwhile, if you don't look too closely.

I'm still expecting "AI", as it exists in corporate America's marketing departments, to result in huge writeoffs for corps. I've posted an article about that a couple of times.

We get so many lies and so much hype from the AI bros pushing generative AI. It's important to keep ML's real contributions to science separate from genAI.

I'm not sure what's going to happen with genAI. My hope is that the tremendous waste of time and resources will soon look as misguided as the Dutch tulip mania...but the genAI frenzy is already much more damaging to many aspects of our society, and potentially much more of a financial catastrophe than the tulip mania was. So many people invested in genAI, from business owners to school admins to venture capitalists, have incentives to try to keep hyping AI as long as the bubble is in any way sustainable. And the AI bros have the corrupt and perpetually lying Trump regime behind them.

I found the OP about the article on AI you referred to: https://www.democraticunderground.com/100221221280 .

Their reasoning is similar to Ed Zitron's.

...other than developing a taste for human brains?

jk