Will o3 Take My Job? Cough-to-Tubercolisis, & More

In partnership with

THEWHITEBOX

TLDR;

Technology:

🫡 Cough-to-Tuberculosis AI

🤩 Google’s Gemini LRM

🕳️ The Well Dataset

Markets:

⚡️ Sriram Enters Trump’s Cabinet

Product:

🥵 Liquid AI Scores $250 Million Funding Round

🫣 o1-preview outperforms Doctors

TREND OF THE WEEK: Why o3 Won’t Take Your Job in 2025

HEALTHCARE

Cough-to-Tuberculosis AI

An article in IEEE Spectrum discusses the development of an artificial intelligence (AI) system designed to detect tuberculosis (TB) by analyzing cough sounds. This innovative approach aims to provide a quick, cost-effective, and accessible screening tool, which would be especially beneficial in regions with limited access to traditional diagnostic methods, like India.

The AI model was trained on a vast dataset of cough recordings from individuals with and without TB. By identifying subtle acoustic differences, the system can distinguish TB coughs from those caused by other conditions. Preliminary results indicate that this method could serve as an effective preliminary screening tool, potentially prompting individuals to seek further medical evaluation.

TheWhiteBox’s takeaway:

I’ve said it many times, and I’ll say it again.

While OpenAI has massively shifted the discourse of AI as a tool to enhance productivity (or even substitute humans, which is, of course, a massively overstated claim but inflates the value of these companies), AI continues to push the boundaries of what’s possible in the way it has always done: as a tool of scientific discovery.

AI’s greatest superpower is pattern recognition. That is, finding subtle patterns in vast amounts of data that can be extrapolated to successful predictions abstracted from those patterns.

Just like a doctor can identify some illnesses based on a human cough, AIs can detect tuberculosis similarly by finding the key nuances that make an ill patient’s cough different from a healthy one.

The issue with healthcare costs is not a small one. The US is currently involved in Luigi Mangioni’s case, and a decent portion of the population favors the alleged killer of the healthcare CEO despite having—again, allegedly—cold-blooded killed a dad of two kids.

This showcases how much this country’s healthcare needs a complete rethink. Luckily, researchers worldwide are finding ingenious ways to use AI to expedite illness detection and, hopefully, reduce healthcare costs worldwide.

This proves that AI may be one of the crucial technologies that can change an industry with total spending by patients and insured almost as big as the US government’s annual budget.

FRONTIER RESEARCH

Google’s Gemini LRM

The same week OpenAI released o3, Google presented its first LRM, Gemini-2.0-Flash-Thinking-Exp-1219. This model quickly rose to the top of all leaderboards in the LMSYS arena (of course, these results are pre-o3 but beat o1-preview and o1-mini).

This is important because it shows the first US-based competitor to o-type models, signaling that Google is quickly catching up with OpenAI’s efforts.

TheWhiteBox’s takeaway:

Google is having a great end of the year, with many remarkable models like Veo2, Genie2, and the Gemini 2.0 series, with this thinking model as the latest release.

For instance, regarding video generation, one could make a…

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