Google kills AlphaFold — so much for AI curing cancer
AlphaFold was a machine learning system from Google Deepmind. It did protein folding. It was usably good at guessing protein structures. It caught public attention by doing really well in the Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction benchmarks. AlphaFold did some useful work — mostly as an extra…
AlphaFold was a machine learning system from Google Deepmind. It did protein folding. It was usably good at guessing protein structures. It caught public attention by doing really well in the Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction benchmarks. AlphaFold did some useful work — mostly as an extra to help biologists predict a structure they were working on. A lot of biologists didn’t find it useful, some did. That’s fine. I’m saying “was” and “did” about AlphaFold because Google killed it. [FT, archive] The original founders of AlphaFold have mostly been reassigned over the past year. Google moved several of them to work on the Gemini chatbot. About a quarter left Google entirely. In 2024, AlphaFold creator John Jumper and DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for their work on AlphaFold! Because the 2024 Prize committee gave multiple prizes for AI-related work, whether it made sense or not. Google moved Jumper to working on … fixing AI computer coding in Gemini. He left Google for Anthropic shortly after. A DeepMind employee told the FT that: their departures had sparked surprise internally. I’m shocked the Nobel-winning researcher wanted to do research, not product work. Google’s real use case for AlphaFold was not the biology. It was to have a handy excuse for the excesses of the AI bubble. Whenever chatbots are being garbage, some bozo will always say: what about medicine, huh? What about AlphaFold, huh? Google was careful not to quite claim that AlphaFold would cure cancer. There’s laws about that. But they did talk about AlphaFold and cancer in the same press release blog posts a whole lot. Even Sam Altman tried it on for OpenAI: [Twitter, archive] grind for a decade trying to help make superintelligence to cure cancer or whatever Whenever an AI bozo says AI will cure cancer, they’re saying out loud what Google was trying to imply quietly. But even that hype no longer does enough work for Google to keep funding it. What now? Google’s Isomorphic Labs is trying to commercialise AlphaFold output. The AlphaFold models and data continue to be developed at OpenFold, which is useful enough it’s attracted a pile of sponsors. [OpenFold] But to Google, not even a Nobel Prize was worth keeping AlphaFold around. Yeah, we’re gonna put you on the chatbot, mate. That’s fine, right? Video — Podcast It’s pledge week at Pivot to AI! If Pivot brightens your day, please do put $5 into the Patreon. Tell your friends!Source: Pivot to AI — Published — Category: Business