Alexa? Get me the cure for the common cold.
Amazon is apparently hoping that's a phrase you'll be able to say one day, as the company is secretly trying to develop a common cold cure, CNBC reported on Friday. The name of this top secret effort certainly doesn't disappoint: "Project Gesundheit."
A small team on Amazon's research and development group Grand Challenge is reportedly working on this project, "hoping to develop a vaccine" but "exploring a variety of approaches to the problem," the report says.
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CNBC notes that Amazon hasn't actually publicly acknowledged Grand Challenge, but the outlet has been reporting on it for years, in 2018 writing that it was also "attempting to apply machine learning in ways that can help prevent and cure cancers." When it comes to curing the common cold, though, let's just say Amazon has its work cut out for it, with one source noting to CNBC, "the prevailing wisdom is that it's impossible." The difficulty of finding a cure, in other words, is nothing to sneeze at.
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