AI breakthrough: Uncovering a previously unknown human ancestor hiding in our genetic past

The capabilities of artificial intelligence continue to expand. It has easily passed a medical exam and has made significant contributions to various scientific fields. Even though tech mogul Elon Musk deems it "a threat more dangerous than the atom", there's no denying its positive impact. A recent finding by artificial intelligence demonstrated this benefit clearly, revealing a previously unknown ancestor of humanity, as documented by IFL Science.

Artificial intelligence has unravelled one of the biggest mysteries surrounding human evolution. The remains of a teenager found in Denisova Cave in 2018, dating back 50,000 years, challenged scientists to answer the species question. Notable features of Neanderthals and Denisovans were identified in the prehistoric human remains. Still, definitive identification eluded researchers.

However, today marks a turning point. AI has proven that this puzzling discovery represents a unique crossbreed of the Neanderthals and Denisovans. Utilizing a large data set of DNA, a sophisticated algorithm has linked this find to a species born from interbreeding. The origin of many previous discoveries had remained elusive due to uncertainty about their exact lineage. Nonetheless, artificial intelligence successfully combined DNA fragments from different scientific databases, proving the existence of interrelations thousands of years ago, such as the remarkable find from 2018.

The researchers investigating the Denisova Cave find in 2018 speculated on the potential for a hybrid species. But it was not until a comprehensive analysis of an expansive DNA database—an impossible task manually—was completed that scientists could confirm the interbreeding of Neanderthals and Denisovans in prehistoric times, leading to the creation of a distinct species previously unknown.

Oscar Lao, the lead researcher at the Centro Nacional de Analisis Genomico in Spain, elaborated that "the ability to predict demographic data using genomes obtained in hundreds of thousands of simulations was exploited. Deep learning enables us to piece together the puzzle of human ancestry."