Even Tech Skeptics Can Cheer AI’s Promise in Decoding the ‘Dark Genome’

Google DeepMind, the artificial intelligence subsidiary of Alphabet, has made another leap in its efforts to illuminate human biology: progress toward using AI to interpret the many still-mysterious chapters in the text of life.

DNA sequencing, once a gargantuan feat, is by now cheap and easy. Deciphering the billions of letters in that code, however, is another story — particularly when it comes to understanding which of the many naturally occurring typos in the text are harmless, and which are implicated in disease.