4 ms·

Saying you'll cure cancer with AI without specifying the type of cancer is like declaring you'll solve crime with Batman. Way too broad to be useful, but makes

Saying you'll cure cancer with AI without specifying the type of cancer is like declaring you'll solve crime with Batman. Way too broad to be useful, but makes a good headline.

highwaylights 3y ago
Also saying “AI will cure cancer” is like saying “our children will solve climate change”. I mean on the surface it seems like the answer is “yeah, probably”, but you’re saying nothing of how exactly.
maerF0x0 3y ago
I'm curious about the presumed language. When we say "She has cancer" we mean "a cancer". (Hopefully she doesn't have all of them!). Why couldn't the sentence "AI will cure cancer" mean "a cancer" as well?
- Ensorceled 3y ago
  "She has cancer" is a specific event, so we logically deduce that it is "a type of cancer". When you say "AI will cure cancer" that is not a singular event, so you assume cancer in the plural. You would have to say "AI will cure some forms of cancer" if you didn't mean the plural here.
frognumber 3y ago
I kind of feel like that's exactly why AI is helpful here: - Grab a cancer (or virus, bacteria, etc.) - Sequence it - AI will develop a custom therapy for that cancer In broad strokes, it's not hard to develop a therapy for any specific cancer or other disease in a specific individual. There are several broad strategies: - A targeted, custom phage to kill a bacteria (or extrapolate to killing a type of cells) - A custom vaccine to make your body make antibodies specific to a disease - And so on.... This is a ≈2 year research effort to do in each case, and perhaps a ≈10 year validation effort, not to mention regulatory. By that point, the patient is dead, or AIDS has mutated a few dozen times, and regardless, you need a massive research team to do so. And to do so, you've spent many million dollars on a research team that whole time. "AI will cure [X]" consists of AI doing the same thing instantly. I go to a doctor. My chronic disease is sequenced. My specific immune system is encouraged to attack that specific disease. I'm cured. (And yes, we each have a very different immune system; see MHC for an example of how and why)
- supermatt 3y ago
  I think this is you falling on the "misunderstands medicine" part of the equation.
- dartos 3y ago
  > sequence it How? You’re hiding a ton of complicated work in these 2 words > AI will develop a custom therapy This statement suggests you really don’t know what you’re talking about with regards to AI. AI doesn’t develop treatments magically. Work needs to be don’t to curate a dataset of treatments and diseases, BUT even then AI can’t create new treatments for existing untreatable cancer as we don’t have any data to go off of. At that point, a team of doctors might as well analyze the data themselves (probably using a more specific kind of ML technique) You’re too cavalier in hand waving away the real work by saying things like “AI will do this. Ez. 2 years”
  - ummonk 3y ago
    No, you're the one who doesn't understand AI. At this point AI has demonstrated ample capability to extrapolate to out of sample data.
    - e44858 3y ago
      Also known as hallucination
      - ben_w 3y ago
        No, hallucinations are specifically when they make mistakes, even when they're more like interpolation than extrapolation. IIRC, it became a term of art during image classification AI development, where an AI might confidently assert a car was a potato, and the name stuck.
        dartos 3y ago
        Idk maybe splitting hairs a bit, but I’d call any output that isn’t represented or which goes against data in a training set is a hallucination. But there can be useful hallucinations. Not sure about the origin of the word, but I always thought it was marketing when chatgpt and dalle was brand new
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
ben_w 3y ago
And likewise without specifying the type of AI. Asking Stable Diffusion for a picture of the chemical structure of a drug to cure even one specific unsolved cancer… I'd be surprised if that ever works (but given how crazy the rate of change has been, only 2σ of surprise).

Saying you'll cure cancer with AI without specifying the type of cancer is like declaring you'll solve crime with Batman. Way too broad to be useful, but makes a good headline.

highwaylights 3y ago

Also saying “AI will cure cancer” is like saying “our children will solve climate change”. I mean on the surface it seems like the answer is “yeah, probably”, but you’re saying nothing of how exactly.

maerF0x0 3y ago

I'm curious about the presumed language. When we say "She has cancer" we mean "a cancer". (Hopefully she doesn't have all of them!). Why couldn't the sentence "AI will cure cancer" mean "a cancer" as well?

Ensorceled 3y ago
"She has cancer" is a specific event, so we logically deduce that it is "a type of cancer". When you say "AI will cure cancer" that is not a singular event, so you assume cancer in the plural. You would have to say "AI will cure some forms of cancer" if you didn't mean the plural here.

frognumber 3y ago

I kind of feel like that's exactly why AI is helpful here: - Grab a cancer (or virus, bacteria, etc.) - Sequence it - AI will develop a custom therapy for that cancer In broad strokes, it's not hard to develop a therapy for any specific cancer or other disease in a specific individual. There are several broad strategies: - A targeted, custom phage to kill a bacteria (or extrapolate to killing a type of cells) - A custom vaccine to make your body make antibodies specific to a disease - And so on.... This is a ≈2 year research effort to do in each case, and perhaps a ≈10 year validation effort, not to mention regulatory. By that point, the patient is dead, or AIDS has mutated a few dozen times, and regardless, you need a massive research team to do so. And to do so, you've spent many million dollars on a research team that whole time. "AI will cure [X]" consists of AI doing the same thing instantly. I go to a doctor. My chronic disease is sequenced. My specific immune system is encouraged to attack that specific disease. I'm cured. (And yes, we each have a very different immune system; see MHC for an example of how and why)

supermatt 3y ago
I think this is you falling on the "misunderstands medicine" part of the equation.
dartos 3y ago
> sequence it How? You’re hiding a ton of complicated work in these 2 words > AI will develop a custom therapy This statement suggests you really don’t know what you’re talking about with regards to AI. AI doesn’t develop treatments magically. Work needs to be don’t to curate a dataset of treatments and diseases, BUT even then AI can’t create new treatments for existing untreatable cancer as we don’t have any data to go off of. At that point, a team of doctors might as well analyze the data themselves (probably using a more specific kind of ML technique) You’re too cavalier in hand waving away the real work by saying things like “AI will do this. Ez. 2 years”
- ummonk 3y ago
  No, you're the one who doesn't understand AI. At this point AI has demonstrated ample capability to extrapolate to out of sample data.
  - e44858 3y ago
    Also known as hallucination
    - ben_w 3y ago
      No, hallucinations are specifically when they make mistakes, even when they're more like interpolation than extrapolation. IIRC, it became a term of art during image classification AI development, where an AI might confidently assert a car was a potato, and the name stuck.
      - dartos 3y ago
        Idk maybe splitting hairs a bit, but I’d call any output that isn’t represented or which goes against data in a training set is a hallucination. But there can be useful hallucinations. Not sure about the origin of the word, but I always thought it was marketing when chatgpt and dalle was brand new

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

ben_w 3y ago

And likewise without specifying the type of AI. Asking Stable Diffusion for a picture of the chemical structure of a drug to cure even one specific unsolved cancer… I'd be surprised if that ever works (but given how crazy the rate of change has been, only 2σ of surprise).