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What do you mean? It certainly can fold new proteins that were not part of its training set, otherwise it is useless. Maybe you mean that it cannot fold protein
by elcomet 4y ago
What do you mean? It certainly can fold new proteins that were not part of its training set, otherwise it is useless. Maybe you mean that it cannot fold proteins in new ways that were never seen in its training set though ? But new proteins might fold in known ways, right?
- bpodgursky 4y agoIt's sarcasm, every time DeepMind does something revolutionary in protein folding, some nominal biochemist jumps in and says "oh no, because it didn't literally automate 100% of my job today, this is overhyped"
- TaupeRanger 4y agoWell it hasn't improved the human condition one bit yet (except for researchers desperate for paper citations), so whether it lives up to the "hype" remains to be seen.
- flobosg 4y agoDeepMind has a website highlighting some of the applications of AlphaFold (https://unfolded.deepmind.com https://unfolded.deepmind.com), and apparently it has improved at least some lines of research.
- TaupeRanger 4y agoYes, again very good for the company's PR and padding researcher CVs. But no actual benefit to humankind has happened - again, the hype remains to be justified (or not). Notice the carefully vapid wording: doing [some nebulous thing] to "fight" [some terrible sounding thing], or "this could do [some holy grail amazing thing]".
- flobosg 4y agoThe same could be said of almost all research, but I see your point. Time will tell, I guess.
- collyw 4y agoAgreed, like the James Web telescope, a load of hype about the beautiful images and how much would be discovered as a result of it. Sure we will be able to see further into the universe, but I am still trying to work out what practical application it will have beyond pretty pictures. Anyway, the hype is over, no one in my social media circle who were amazed by it have gone on to post a second picture. Meanwhile a drunk scientist put out a picture of a piece of chorizoand trolled them all. I see it as a merger of "I support the current thing" with "I fucking love science".
- dekhn 4y agoactually, tehre are a number of papers published now using alphafold predictions to benefit. No, nobody cured the world of all diseases, but it does represent a sea-change in prediction quality.
- samus 4y agoAccording to TA, a novel protein nanoparticle is part of some COVID vaccine. It's not far-fetched to assume that such nanoparticles will be designed with machine learning tools in the future.
- TulliusCicero 4y agoAnd then if that happens, people will say, oh but that innovation was discovered a long time ago, these companies haven't done anything earth-shattering recently.
- whymauri 4y agoI would pay skepticism to entrepreneurial commentaries on AlphaFold (CEO of a company based on competing technology has hot take, who would have guessed?), but I would mind the caveats and areas of improvement pointed out by domain experts i.e. Baker, AlQuraishi, etc. Keeping in mind that the latter usually spend more time praising AlphaFold than not -- and yes, they have more domain knowledge than pretty much anyone on HN: https://moalquraishi.wordpress.com/2021/07/25/the-alphafold2-method-paper-a-fount-of-good-ideas/ https://moalquraishi.wordpress.com/2021/07/25/the-alphafold2... It's almost entirely positive. There was a slice in time where I was effectively paid to find as many gaps in AlphaFold as I could, and, even then, I couldn't help but be impressed.