Algorithms · November 2021Gaffe level: Feral
Zillow's Pricing Algorithms Bought Thousands of Homes It Could Not Sell
Zillow cranked up its pricing algorithms, overpaid for a mountain of houses, then shut down the entire home-flipping business after losing $381 million in one quarter and writing down over half a billion dollars. The algorithm could not predict the future, so neither could the business built on it.
Source: RISMedia
An AI-Designed Bird Flu Vaccine Gave Complete Protection in Animals
Cambridge researchers and spinout DIOSynVax used AI to design a broad-spectrum bird flu vaccine from global virus genome data. In animal trials it fully protected mice and ferrets against diverse variants that have caused human infections, while the stockpiled WHO vaccine protected only about half. Human trials are the next step.
Source: Medical Xpress