These Scientists Want Photos of Your Poop to Train AI
%2Favatars%2FBUoTZ6lM79yi.jpg&w=96&q=75)
%2Fimg%2Fiea%2FQjOdo8DWwd%2Fpoop-emoji.jpg&w=3840&q=75)
You may have heard it before but your bowel movements are a really rich source of medical information.
They reveal a lot about what is going on in your body and particularly your gut. As such, they can provide invaluable data to medical professionals.
RELATED: THE TRUTH ABOUT COFFEE AND YOUR POOP
Understanding poo
Now, a company called Seed Health wants to help researchers better understand what is going on with poop by creating a database of poop for artificial intelligence to train on. To do this, they are requesting volunteers to send in pictures of their turds along with a little bit of information about their pooping cycle.
With the motto, "We dare you to give a shit for science," the poop seeking campaign has taken the media by storm. And Seed Health is hoping to collect 100,000 prospective images.
From there, a team of gastroenterologists will sort through each image on the Bristol scale of poop consistencies that has seven categories.
Then, a new AI platform named 'auggi,' trained to identify poops via 36,000 images of Play-Doh models, will hopefully learn to distinguish ailments that are identifiable through poop.
Helping people
Before you dismiss this as a gimmick, it should be noted that the project has the potential to really help medical professionals by speeding up the process of identifying diseases through poop. And considering the fact that roughly one in five Americans suffer from gastrointestinal conditions, there are a lot of people that could be helped.
Ara Katz, co-founder, and co-CEO of Seed Health told Gizmodo that the project allows regular folk an opportunity to assist scientists. “It’s projects like this [that] allow people who are not scientists to participate in citizen science. By crowdsourcing data, we can help researchers and technologies like auggi in order to help people identify different conditions," she said.
Here's how you can contribute:
— Seed Health (@seedhealth) October 29, 2019
Step 1: Poop
Step 2: Take a photo
Step 3: Upload it anonymously to https://t.co/TN8QTo8PWt
Step 4: Spread the (bowel) movement and get others to #GIVEASHIT, too.
So if you a ready to "give a shit," you can photograph your poop and submit it at seed.com/poop.
SHOW COMMENT (1)
/2022/09/30/image/jpeg/2lhjx4VQogI1ZcLs3z6oQN2UGB4ij8FL1SXcSF7V.jpg "Microsoft Excel tips: 74 best shortcuts to become a spreadsheet guru")
/2022/08/09/image/jpeg/F9x4UW78rTQX2Uuz4MM7cQUQkzxidXL5wZawfSCd.jpg "Exploring emotions, the brain, and free will with Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett")
/2023/05/20/image/jpeg/qGLecng5T9rgIGZSsgiqXO1GgHfPT8WL781Q7uMq.jpg "World's most efficient aero-engine, the Rolls-Royce UltraFan, completes first test")
/2023/05/23/image/jpeg/WGiDzBgkMEB3MWU2C2FQaPjsdhaIUwtYZUSBvBiE.jpg "Triangles over circles? YouTuber builds funky cycle with special wheels")
/2022/09/12/image/jpeg/DgNPDzi1rYgAezXgYYMXVwmTUKb8o56xWElTFr77.jpg "Can engineers change the world? Why we need to rethink a widely-held belief about tech")
/2023/05/15/image/jpeg/soGdovbKhxq3lFgwDbnMUgDSihdw7BR2C8R4BbOC.jpg "Chinese scientists develop technology to create 3D ceramic printing without support")
/2022/09/16/image/jpeg/ylQGrpxWUrV4hYEozvIgkubGJEJr781zH1Bfg8ZQ.jpg "A Turkish clinic swaps refugees' warzone-welded prosthetics for free 3D-printed ones")
/2022/08/15/image/jpeg/3rB6UDbv5G5linvtuigrfI4PC2N3Mka0lLffi9BJ.jpg "The engineer who built an airplane in his backyard is flying around Europe with his family")
/2023/05/26/image/jpeg/smTFO3AG7ESAzCi8L0kVnrUEHbVmcjiZ2KhVW0QE.jpg "Potential cure for diabetes found in groundbreaking stem cell study")
/2023/05/17/image/jpeg/DkhVUYyTr3zCw7iMFNI06s7EfwX7rbb5FNLrNLqh.jpg "Rimac's electric hypercar Nevera breaks 23 records, does 0-62 mph in 1.81 seconds")