1108
So where's that miraculous cure, then? (europe.pub)
submitted 4 days ago by to c/fuck_ai@lemmy.world
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[–] 165 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (10 children)

Google discontinued development of alphafold, broke up the team, let many go and transferred the rest to general LLM development except for some that were moved to their vertically integrated own pharmaceutical research (to cash in on the whole value chain and lock everyone else out of their tools).

Mind you, that is the tool that got people a Nobel Prize.

https://thenextweb.com/news/deepmind-alphafold-team-dismantled-gemini-anthropic

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  • [–] 48 points 4 days ago (6 children)

    Luckily there's also OpenFold as an open-source alternative for protein folding (maybe also nucleic acids? I dunno)

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  • [–] 30 points 4 days ago* (4 children)

    There are numerous models available nowadays, even alphafold still is but Google took itself out of the game by letting it die due to lack of further development, focusing on its "be evil" company philosophy.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    I'm convinced "Don't be evil" was a canary.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 days ago

    It certainly was, and it didn't take long for the canaries to start dying, which immediately alerted everyone that there was a possible canary-murderer on the loose within the organization, which they solved by following the canary-murderer's instructions to pursue profit at any cost and using a tiny sliver of the budget for regularly buying more canaries.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 days ago (1 child)

    Google discontinued development of alphafold

    No they did not, it's on version 3 and they just added >50 PTMs to modelling this month. Another version is being developed and sold to pharma on subscription on a large scale batch modelling platform.

    broke up the team

    The team continued on to other projects, including the commercial version mentioned above. There was no point in continuing when the development was just adding more features.

    the tool that got people a Nobel Prize

    2 people from Deepmind, Jumper and Hassabis, one person at U Wash , Baker, is still developing AlphaFold with Google and is a academic lab.

    You put a lot of faith on one vague article.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

    You partially correct my statement but weirdly enough largely confirm it, just with a PR twist. "There was no point in continuing when the development was just adding more features." But it is not, AlphaFold 3.0 is still far from perfect. We need more than just a few more added features. But the next big step will be either some closed thing, developed by a largely changed team, sold for a fortune as subscription model to pharma multis or be done by entirely different groups that have nothing to do with Google or Deepmind.

    There is a reason why Hassabis is not working on it anymore and of course he will say it was all as it should be, given how he was moved upwards.

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