Ten artificial intelligence models were trained to identify bacteria and viruses from mass spectrometry fingerprints. Seven named all twelve organisms correctly every time. Then the researchers tested three of the best on spectra generated by a different institution, and one of them dropped to 54 percent.
That collapse, not the perfect score, is the finding worth reporting. It was published Monday in Scientific Reports by a team spanning the Center for Research and Technology-Hellas in Greece, Tallinn University of Technology in Estonia, and Belgian Defense Laboratories with the Royal Military Academy in Brussels.
