Perspectives

To fulfil the potential of quantum machine learning for practical applications in the near future, it needs to be robust against adversarial attacks. West and colleagues give an overview of recent developments in quantum adversarial machine learning, and outline key challenges and future research directions to advance the field.

Language models trained on proteins can help to predict functions from sequences but provide little insight into the underlying mechanisms. Vu and colleagues explain how extracting the underlying rules from a protein language model can make them interpretable and help explain biological mechanisms.

Cancer diagnosis and treatment decisions often focus on one data source. Steyaert and colleagues discuss the current status and challenges of data fusion, including electronic health records, molecular data, digital pathology and radiographic images, in cancer research and translational development.

One of the main advances in deep learning in the past five years has been graph representation learning, which enabled applications to problems with underlying geometric relationships. Increasingly, such problems involve multiple data modalities and, examining over 160 studies in this area, Ektefaie et al. propose a general framework for multimodal graph learning for image-intensive, knowledge-grounded and language-intensive problems.

An increasing number of regulations demand transparency in automated decision-making processes such as in automated online recruitment. To provide meaningful transparency, Sloane et al. propose the use of ‘nutritional’ labels that display specific information about an automated decision system, depending on the context.

Gathering big datasets has become an essential component of machine learning in many scientific areas, but it is unavoidable that some data values are missing. An important and growing effect that needs careful attention, especially when heterogeneous data sources are combined, is that of structured missingness, where data values are missing not at random, but with a specific structure.

A goal of AI is to develop autonomous artificial agents with a wide set of skills. The authors propose the immersion of intrinsically motivated agents within rich socio-cultural worlds, focusing on language as a way for artificial agents to develop new cognitive functions.

Finding good benchmarks is an important and pervasive problem in machine learning for healthcare. This Perspective highlights key aspects that require scrutiny in the whole process of benchmark generation and use, including problem formulation, creation of datasets, development of a suite of machine learning models and evaluation of these models.

The metaverse is gaining prominence in industry, academia and social media. Wang and colleagues envision a medical technology and AI ecosystem, and present this perspective on the future of healthcare in the metaverse.

It has become rapidly clear in the past few years that the creation, use and maintenance of high-quality annotated datasets for robust and reliable AI applications requires careful attention. This Perspective discusses challenges, considerations and best practices for various stages in the data-to-AI pipeline, to encourage a more data-centric approach.

Unsupervised machine learning algorithms reduce the dependence on curated, labeled datasets that are characteristic of supervised machine learning. The authors argue that the developmental science of infant cognition could inform the design of unsupervised machine learning approaches.

Despite the growing number of initiatives that employ AI to counter corruption, few studies empirically tackle the political and social consequences of embedding AI in anti-corruption efforts. The authors outline the societal and technical challenges that need to be overcome for AI to fight corruption.

Behavioural big data and algorithmic behaviour modification technologies controlled by commercial platforms have become difficult for academic researchers to access. Greene et al. describe barriers to academic research on such data and algorithms, and make a case for enhancing platform access and transparency.

It is an outstanding challenge to develop intelligent machines that can learn continually from interactions with their environment, throughout their lifetime. Kudithipudi et al. review neuronal and non-neuronal processes in organisms that address this challenge and discuss pathways to developing biologically inspired approaches for lifelong learning machines.

Machine learning applications in agriculture can bring many benefits in crop management and productivity. However, to avoid harmful effects of a new round of technological modernization, fuelled by AI, a thorough risk assessment is required, to review and mitigate risks such as unintended socio-ecological consequences and security concerns associated with applying machine learning models at scale.

Machine learning performs well at predictive modelling based on statistical correlations, but for high-stakes applications, more robust, explainable and fair approaches are required. Cui and Athey discuss the benefits of bringing causal inference into machine learning, presenting a stable learning approach.

Although artificial reinforcement learning agents do well when rules are rigid, such as games, they fare poorly in real-world scenarios where small changes in the environment or the required actions can impair performance. The authors provide an overview of the cognitive foundations of hierarchical problem-solving, and propose steps to integrate biologically inspired hierarchical mechanisms to enable problem-solving skills in artificial agents.

Digitally recreating the likeness of a person used to be a costly and complex process. Through the use of generative models, AI-generated characters can now be made with relative ease. Pataranutaporn et al. discuss in this Perspective how this technology can be used for positive applications in education and well-being.

Substantial advances have been made in the past decade in developing high-performance machine learning models for medical applications, but translating them into practical clinical decision-making processes remains challenging. This Perspective provides insights into a range of challenges specific to high-dimensional, multimodal medical imaging.

AI has impacted many fields, but hearing has lagged behind. This Perspective calls for a collaboration between the AI and hearing communities, with the goal of transforming hearing healthcare and research.