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That sucks a bit. I was just wondering why they are touting that 3rd party company in their own blog post, who commercialise research tools, as well. Maybe ther

That sucks a bit. I was just wondering why they are touting that 3rd party company in their own blog post, who commercialise research tools, as well. Maybe there are some corporate agreements with them that prevents them from opening the system... Imagine the goodwill for humanity for releasing these pure research systems for free. I just have a hard time understanding how you can motivate to keep it closed. Let's hope it will be replicated by someone who doesn't have to hide behind the "responsible AI" curtain as it seems they are now. Are they really thinking that someone who needs to predict 11 structures per day are more likely to be a nefarious evil protein guy than someone who predicts 10 structures a day? Was AlphaFold-2 (that was open-sourced) used by evil researchers?

staminade 2y ago
Isomorphic Labs? That's an Alphabet owned startup run by Denis Hassabis that they created to commercialise the Alphafold work, so it's not really a 3rd party at all.
SubiculumCode 2y ago
There is at least some difference between a monitored server and a privately ran one, if negative consequences are possible
perihelions 2y ago
- "Imagine the goodwill for humanity for releasing these pure research systems for free." The entire point[0] is that they want to sell an API to drug-developer labs, at exclusive-monopoly pricing. Those labs in turn discover life-saving drugs, and recoup their costs from e.g. parents of otherwise-terminally-ill children—again, priced as an exclusive monopoly. [0] As signaled by "it is not possible to obtain structures of proteins bound to possible drugs" It's a massive windfall for Alphabet, and it'd be a profound breach of their fiduciary duties as a public company to do anything other than lock-down and hoard this API, and squeeze it for every last billion. This is a deeply, deeply, deeply broken situation.
- karencarits 2y ago
  What is the current status of drugs where the major contribution is from AI? Are they protectable like other drugs? Or are they more copyless like AI art and so on?
- iknowstuff 2y ago
  Is it broken if it yields new drugs? Is there a system that yields more? The whole point of capitalism is that it incentivizes this in a way that no other system does.
  - l33tman 2y ago
    My point one level up in the comments here, was not really that the system is broken, but more like asking how you can run these companies (google and that other part run by the deepmind founder, who I bet already has more money than he can ever spend) and still sleep well knowing you're the rich capitalist a-hole commercializing life-science work that your parent company has allocated maybe one part in a million of their R&D budget into creating. It's not like Google is ever going to make billions on this anyway, the alphafold algorithms are not super advanced and you don't require the datasets of gpt4 to train them so others will hopefully catch up.. though I'm also pretty sure it requires GPU-hours beyond what a typical non-profit academia outfit has available unfortunately.. :/
- lupire 2y ago
  The parents of those otherwise terminally ill children disagree with you in the strongest possible terms.
- goggy_googy 2y ago
  What makes this such a "deeply broken situation"? I agree that late-stage capitalism can create really tough situations for poor families trying to afford drugs. At the same time, I don't know any other incentive structure that would have brought us a breakthrough like AlphaFold this soon. For the first time in history, we have ML models that are beating out the scientific models by huge margins. The very fact that this comes out of the richest, most competitive country in the history of the world is not a coincidence. The proximate cause of the suffering for terminally-ill children is really the drug company's pricing. If you want to regulate this, though, you'll almost certainly have fewer breakthroughs like AlphaFold. From a utilitarian perspective, by preserving the existing incentive structure (the "deeply broken situation" as you call it), you will be extending the lifespans of more people in the future (as opposed to extending lifespans of more people now by lowering drug prices).

staminade 2y ago

Isomorphic Labs? That's an Alphabet owned startup run by Denis Hassabis that they created to commercialise the Alphafold work, so it's not really a 3rd party at all.

SubiculumCode 2y ago

There is at least some difference between a monitored server and a privately ran one, if negative consequences are possible

perihelions 2y ago

- "Imagine the goodwill for humanity for releasing these pure research systems for free." The entire point[0] is that they want to sell an API to drug-developer labs, at exclusive-monopoly pricing. Those labs in turn discover life-saving drugs, and recoup their costs from e.g. parents of otherwise-terminally-ill children—again, priced as an exclusive monopoly. [0] As signaled by "it is not possible to obtain structures of proteins bound to possible drugs" It's a massive windfall for Alphabet, and it'd be a profound breach of their fiduciary duties as a public company to do anything other than lock-down and hoard this API, and squeeze it for every last billion. This is a deeply, deeply, deeply broken situation.

karencarits 2y ago
What is the current status of drugs where the major contribution is from AI? Are they protectable like other drugs? Or are they more copyless like AI art and so on?
iknowstuff 2y ago
Is it broken if it yields new drugs? Is there a system that yields more? The whole point of capitalism is that it incentivizes this in a way that no other system does.
- l33tman 2y ago
  My point one level up in the comments here, was not really that the system is broken, but more like asking how you can run these companies (google and that other part run by the deepmind founder, who I bet already has more money than he can ever spend) and still sleep well knowing you're the rich capitalist a-hole commercializing life-science work that your parent company has allocated maybe one part in a million of their R&D budget into creating. It's not like Google is ever going to make billions on this anyway, the alphafold algorithms are not super advanced and you don't require the datasets of gpt4 to train them so others will hopefully catch up.. though I'm also pretty sure it requires GPU-hours beyond what a typical non-profit academia outfit has available unfortunately.. :/
lupire 2y ago
The parents of those otherwise terminally ill children disagree with you in the strongest possible terms.
goggy_googy 2y ago
What makes this such a "deeply broken situation"? I agree that late-stage capitalism can create really tough situations for poor families trying to afford drugs. At the same time, I don't know any other incentive structure that would have brought us a breakthrough like AlphaFold this soon. For the first time in history, we have ML models that are beating out the scientific models by huge margins. The very fact that this comes out of the richest, most competitive country in the history of the world is not a coincidence. The proximate cause of the suffering for terminally-ill children is really the drug company's pricing. If you want to regulate this, though, you'll almost certainly have fewer breakthroughs like AlphaFold. From a utilitarian perspective, by preserving the existing incentive structure (the "deeply broken situation" as you call it), you will be extending the lifespans of more people in the future (as opposed to extending lifespans of more people now by lowering drug prices).