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Worth noting that they did release the AlphaFold 2 weights after a while. Milking an expensive discovery for a limited period should be considered laudable, unl
by abecedarius 2y ago
Worth noting that they did release the AlphaFold 2 weights after a while. Milking an expensive discovery for a limited period should be considered laudable, unless you think tax funding of all research would be awesome and it's just a weird anomaly how the org producing these results was a tiny heterodox startup very recently.
- DrScientist 2y ago> Worth noting that they did release the AlphaFold 2 weights after a while. Yes - though I don't think Isomorphic labs existed at that point. Obviously the real reason AlphaFold was possible was the huge tax payer funded effort running over decades to generate a diverse, high quality 3D structure dataset. However that's why we put taxes into research - to spur innovation in a pre-competitive way - so that's fine. What's not fine is any benefiting company avoiding paying any tax back on resulting profits - that's just free riding - and many of the big tech companies are, in my view, guilty.
- abecedarius 2y agoThe data is a treasure. It was just as available to others, before and after.
- DrScientist 2y agoYep not knocking alphafold - Alphafold showed it could be done[1], and others have subsequently followed. However if all the tech companies hoover up all the profits and simultaneously avoid paying the appropriate level of taxes - then the cycle of innovation isn't sustainable. As well taxes paying for that pre-competitive data, they train the next generation of PhDs. [1] There were other groups making progress with DL based structure prediction before Alphafold, but alphafold was a leap forward.
- uptownfunk 2y agoYou know I can appreciate that. For some reason because it’s related to medicine, it feels insidious to keep it closed.