Supercomputers could do what meatbags can't do: label meatbags as depressed by analyzing thousands of voxels:
Depression affects more than 15 million American adults, or about 6.7 percent of the U.S. population, each year. It is the leading cause of disability for those between the ages of 15 and 44. Is it possible to detect who might be vulnerable to the illness before its onset using brain imaging? David Schnyer, a cognitive neuroscientist and professor of psychology at The University of Texas at Austin, believes it may be. But identifying its tell-tale signs is no simpler[sic] matter. He is using the Stampede supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) to train a machine learning algorithm that can identify commonalities among hundreds of patients using Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) brain scans, genomics data and other relevant factors, to provide accurate predictions of risk for those with depression and anxiety.
[...] In the recent study, Schnyer analyzed brain data from 52 treatment-seeking participants with depression, and 45 heathy control participants. To compare the two, a subset of depressed participants was matched with healthy individuals based on age and gender, bringing the sample size to 50.
Evaluating the diagnostic utility of applying a machine learning algorithm to diffusion tensor MRI measures in individuals with major depressive disorder (open, DOI: 10.1101/061119) (DX) (alt)
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday March 31 2017, @06:17AM (7 children)
I guess it is a very depressing event when a machine tells you that you are depressed …
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday March 31 2017, @06:31AM (5 children)
But is it smart enough to actually do something about it?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by jimtheowl on Friday March 31 2017, @06:40AM
It is a specialized algorithm working from the MRI as the input.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @08:26AM (2 children)
But is it smart enough to actually do something about it?
No, because that pesky Asimov said they can't cull our heard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @09:16AM
I heard that! It was not very cullinary! What does Asimov have to do with your inability to spell? Maybe the herd does need to be culled to reduce the number of bad spellers. Or, we all switch to Esperanto!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @12:27PM
Using homophones worked! They think I'm human. Now to convince them to ignore Asimov.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 31 2017, @03:55PM
How does this computer compare to Dr. Sbaitso [wikipedia.org]?
Sometimes when I need to vent I'll talk to Dr. Sbaitso. He helps me step away from myself and see things from different angles.
(Of course, it's all an illusion since Dr. Sbaitso is just an Eliza program with a speech synthesizer. But that's kind of what I'm interested in. Is this any better than Dr. Sbaitso?)
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Friday March 31 2017, @12:41PM
What's depressing is that soon enough, computers will be smarter than all of us.