4 ms·

Ask HN: Why did Google build Alphafold?

1 points by yehosef 5y ago

Can someone give some insight into their motivation for funding this project? It's an impressive feat, but I'm trying to see how it fits into any of their businesses. Any ideas?

wiz21c 5y ago
To rule over the production of new medicines ? ('cos if I understand properly, folding proteins is an important part of the process...)
yehosef 5y ago
I just found this - https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/alphabet-google-ai-drug-discovery-deepmind-protein-folding https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/alphabet-google-ai-dru.... I was thinking that if you can do the process in reverse - "we need a molecule that is shaped like <this> - find me the RNA sequence that will build it" - that might have interesting repercussions.
throwaway29303 5y ago
Ever since Google's inception there was always this intrinsic motivation to tackle real life hard problems and get the best and brightest people to solve them. Add to that their huge investment into machine learning and related fields and you can see why they bought DeepMind and other similar companies/projects. Protein folding, as far as I understand, is a very challenging problem. There's a huge profit potential for such endeavour, not to mention the scientific advancement of that field. Only a fool would let that chance pass by. Recall that Alphabet was created with the intention of forming a group of different, unrelated and independent companies (of which Google is part of and basically funds the entire operation). The goal here, IMO, is to diversify investment and therefore increase profit potential. To get a better picture of the whole thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Inc. Also, read the founders' letter: https://abc.xyz/ https://abc.xyz/
beardyw 5y ago
Alpha XXX is their AI applied to XXX. The value is the same as AlphaZero for chess - working out how-to use AI for difficult problems. Understanding AI is important to them.

1 points by yehosef 5y ago

Can someone give some insight into their motivation for funding this project? It's an impressive feat, but I'm trying to see how it fits into any of their businesses. Any ideas?

wiz21c 5y ago

To rule over the production of new medicines ? ('cos if I understand properly, folding proteins is an important part of the process...)

yehosef 5y ago

I just found this - https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/alphabet-google-ai-drug-discovery-deepmind-protein-folding https://www.fiercebiotech.com/medtech/alphabet-google-ai-dru.... I was thinking that if you can do the process in reverse - "we need a molecule that is shaped like <this> - find me the RNA sequence that will build it" - that might have interesting repercussions.

throwaway29303 5y ago

Ever since Google's inception there was always this intrinsic motivation to tackle real life hard problems and get the best and brightest people to solve them. Add to that their huge investment into machine learning and related fields and you can see why they bought DeepMind and other similar companies/projects. Protein folding, as far as I understand, is a very challenging problem. There's a huge profit potential for such endeavour, not to mention the scientific advancement of that field. Only a fool would let that chance pass by. Recall that Alphabet was created with the intention of forming a group of different, unrelated and independent companies (of which Google is part of and basically funds the entire operation). The goal here, IMO, is to diversify investment and therefore increase profit potential. To get a better picture of the whole thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Inc. Also, read the founders' letter: https://abc.xyz/ https://abc.xyz/

beardyw 5y ago

Alpha XXX is their AI applied to XXX. The value is the same as AlphaZero for chess - working out how-to use AI for difficult problems. Understanding AI is important to them.