4 ms·

What is Google actually doing with these systems? Are they using it to develop new drugs themselves? Or licensing it to the pharmaceutical industry?

by gman83 2y ago

skadamat 2y ago
Cynical take - mostly to appear like a diverse tech company with lots of different products and services so they don't get regulated for their strength in the search advertising market.
- aurareturn 2y ago
  I think occam's razor might suggest they're trying to diversify their revenue so if search declines, they have fallbacks.
  - faceloss 2y ago
    [dead]
  - DiscourseFan 2y ago
    could be both
- kridsdale3 2y ago
  As a Google engineer, I think it's two things: - Great for recruitment: You're the most talented $SKILL in the world? Come to the team that is pushing humanity forward in all the ways that matter. - Larry and Sergei actually care about humanity, and being a billionaire is kind of a side-effect of what they would have done anyway.
  - bawolff 2y ago
    Its not like google is the first company to have a will R&D department. Xerox invented the mouse. AT&T invented unix & c. Etc
  - ipsum2 2y ago
    Not sure if you know this, but Larry nor Sergei run Google right now.
- tim333 2y ago
  This is being done by Deepmind and Deepmind's main founder has always said he wants to use AI to advance basic science. I think that is maybe why they fell behind on chatbots for a bit.
VyseofArcadia 2y ago
I know that you can actually use AlphaFold at least. My wife, microbiologist, told me she's used it a couple of times at work. I don't know what their monetization model is, if her lab had to get a license or anything. But I know scientists are using it. I play Go recreationally. I don't think I can use AlphaGo (or its successors) directly, but the published research on AlphaGo has inspired other strong Go AIs. Online Go platforms integrate them to offer AI matches as well as analyze games between humans. I also know that professionally ranked players are adopting things learned from AI into their own play, and a lot of traditional joseki (analogous to chess openings) are being rethought based on insights from AI play.
- eitally 2y ago
  It's licensed through Google Cloud as one hosted option, but also open sourced.
dekhn 2y ago
IIUC most of the commercialization is done through Isomorphic (https://www.isomorphiclabs.com/ https://www.isomorphiclabs.com/). My guess is that Google Research/DM itself wants to stay at the front of the field rather than develop drugs (of which protein design is really just a tiny contribution). When I worked at Google I made a case for doing protein design/preliminary drug discovery using Google infrastructure and it was well received by the leadership. The leadership at Google is mostly computer scientists who know about, but can't actually do, leading-edge life sciences research, and they want to contribute some amount of Google's resources to advancing the state of the art. That's the only reason exacycle was permitted- because Urs thought we could maybe help save the world with protein design (and it wasn't a good approach because it wasted enormous amounts of power on unbiased sampling of large proteins). Honestly I don't think Google proper is really a good place for this work to be applied, though. Their attention is easily diverted, they repeatedly fail to commercialize, and most importantly, potential partners are scared Google will steal their data, and replace their business.
- rty32 2y ago
  I wonder why things seem to work well with Waymo? Google was never in the auto industry, but they were able to create a subsidiary that has become a leader in automated driving system.
  - dekhn 2y ago
    Yeah, waymo is a bit of an outlier and I think it's got to be a directive from Larry to spend some amount of money/engineering effort to move it forward, with the expectation that it will transform the world into a better place (rather than generate a lot of revenue for Google).
- ackbar03 2y ago
  So deepmind is doing more of the fundamental stuff and isomorphic the commercialization? I thought isomorphic would have been carrying the protein projects now since Google brain/deepmind, now Google deepmind, is focusing on catching up with openai and stuff and less on fundamental research
TrainedMonkey 2y ago
Alphabet has a medical division - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verily https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verily . My somewhat cynical take is that most extremely wealthy individuals would like to live longer. But more immediately this is an interesting and relevant problem to solve, so it servers as a tool to benchmark and improve AI... and the current theory is that at some point AI will {generate unlimited amount of wealth | lead humanity into the post-scarcity society | solve all human problems by eliminating humans}.
leesec 2y ago
They penned a 3B deal with Novartis and Eli Lily I believe

What is Google actually doing with these systems? Are they using it to develop new drugs themselves? Or licensing it to the pharmaceutical industry?

by gman83 2y ago

What is Google actually doing with these systems? Are they using it to develop new drugs themselves? Or licensing it to the pharmaceutical industry?

skadamat 2y ago

Cynical take - mostly to appear like a diverse tech company with lots of different products and services so they don't get regulated for their strength in the search advertising market.

aurareturn 2y ago
I think occam's razor might suggest they're trying to diversify their revenue so if search declines, they have fallbacks.
- faceloss 2y ago
  [dead]
- DiscourseFan 2y ago
  could be both
kridsdale3 2y ago
As a Google engineer, I think it's two things: - Great for recruitment: You're the most talented $SKILL in the world? Come to the team that is pushing humanity forward in all the ways that matter. - Larry and Sergei actually care about humanity, and being a billionaire is kind of a side-effect of what they would have done anyway.
- bawolff 2y ago
  Its not like google is the first company to have a will R&D department. Xerox invented the mouse. AT&T invented unix & c. Etc
- ipsum2 2y ago
  Not sure if you know this, but Larry nor Sergei run Google right now.
tim333 2y ago
This is being done by Deepmind and Deepmind's main founder has always said he wants to use AI to advance basic science. I think that is maybe why they fell behind on chatbots for a bit.

VyseofArcadia 2y ago

I know that you can actually use AlphaFold at least. My wife, microbiologist, told me she's used it a couple of times at work. I don't know what their monetization model is, if her lab had to get a license or anything. But I know scientists are using it. I play Go recreationally. I don't think I can use AlphaGo (or its successors) directly, but the published research on AlphaGo has inspired other strong Go AIs. Online Go platforms integrate them to offer AI matches as well as analyze games between humans. I also know that professionally ranked players are adopting things learned from AI into their own play, and a lot of traditional joseki (analogous to chess openings) are being rethought based on insights from AI play.

eitally 2y ago
It's licensed through Google Cloud as one hosted option, but also open sourced.

dekhn 2y ago

IIUC most of the commercialization is done through Isomorphic (https://www.isomorphiclabs.com/ https://www.isomorphiclabs.com/). My guess is that Google Research/DM itself wants to stay at the front of the field rather than develop drugs (of which protein design is really just a tiny contribution). When I worked at Google I made a case for doing protein design/preliminary drug discovery using Google infrastructure and it was well received by the leadership. The leadership at Google is mostly computer scientists who know about, but can't actually do, leading-edge life sciences research, and they want to contribute some amount of Google's resources to advancing the state of the art. That's the only reason exacycle was permitted- because Urs thought we could maybe help save the world with protein design (and it wasn't a good approach because it wasted enormous amounts of power on unbiased sampling of large proteins). Honestly I don't think Google proper is really a good place for this work to be applied, though. Their attention is easily diverted, they repeatedly fail to commercialize, and most importantly, potential partners are scared Google will steal their data, and replace their business.

rty32 2y ago
I wonder why things seem to work well with Waymo? Google was never in the auto industry, but they were able to create a subsidiary that has become a leader in automated driving system.
- dekhn 2y ago
  Yeah, waymo is a bit of an outlier and I think it's got to be a directive from Larry to spend some amount of money/engineering effort to move it forward, with the expectation that it will transform the world into a better place (rather than generate a lot of revenue for Google).
ackbar03 2y ago
So deepmind is doing more of the fundamental stuff and isomorphic the commercialization? I thought isomorphic would have been carrying the protein projects now since Google brain/deepmind, now Google deepmind, is focusing on catching up with openai and stuff and less on fundamental research

TrainedMonkey 2y ago

Alphabet has a medical division - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verily https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verily . My somewhat cynical take is that most extremely wealthy individuals would like to live longer. But more immediately this is an interesting and relevant problem to solve, so it servers as a tool to benchmark and improve AI... and the current theory is that at some point AI will {generate unlimited amount of wealth | lead humanity into the post-scarcity society | solve all human problems by eliminating humans}.

leesec 2y ago

They penned a 3B deal with Novartis and Eli Lily I believe