SPEAKER_04

You know, predictions are great, but when there's a data point off the curve, at least in my lab, that's where we spend the most time at our lab meetings, is trying to figure out why that data point's off the curve.

Is it because the machine was wrong?

It was a glitch?

Or does it mean something that we need to make sense of?

And that's, of course, where all advances come from in the sciences is by the fact that the data off the curve, somebody was curious enough about what it meant to go after it and then say, ah, okay, now that I've stepped back and see the bigger picture, now I can create a model that incorporates that data point off the curve and why it happened.

And then the amount of data that had to be collected now.

And so here's the difference is that there's data, there's evidence, there's conclusions and proof.

And that's an uphill climb.

But proof, the next one up is meaning.

My lab has been largely responsible, at least partly responsible, for the data deluge that's out there in the world, both in how to do tissue biopsy analysis, how to do single cell analysis, etc.

And, you know, data felt good for a while.

It was like this, you know...

This feedback loop of, oh, wow, I can get all this data.

And then suddenly you look at it and you go, well, what the fuck does it mean?

And so humanity has this habit of backing itself into a corner and then suddenly finding this eureka moment that gets it out.

And so our eureka moment about two years ago was artificial intelligence.

Where suddenly I had the ability – so normally I would collect all this data and go, okay, well, it seems myelid suppressor cells are important here and T regulatory cells are important here.

Okay, I get on the phone or I send an email to whoever the local expert is either on Stanford campus or around the world and try to get some information from them.

But then now you're dealing with hundreds of cell types, each individually of which have thousands of variations themselves.

And each subtle variation means something.