Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100 • Hacker News Board

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#81

Post by adventured » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 9:15 PM UTC

M_Grey wrote: post #66

I plan to conquer the world and all of its inhabitants... long after all of us here are dead or senescent. I guess it is easy to make empty statements if you make them apply to a far enough future. Mars colonies from Musk (still working on getting the colonists there in one piece of course), and all disease tackled!* *With $3Bn

The difference being that you don't have an army or the power necessary such that I'm going to consider your plans to be serious in the least.

With $56 billion, I'm inclined to take Zuckerberg a lot more seriously. He currently has eight times the annual R&D budget of Pfizer in paper wealth that has been increasing in value at a rapid clip (emphasis on paper, in that of course it may go up a lot more or down a lot, who knows). Tackling all disease is beyond grandiose; wiping out numerous diseases however is not - that would be an extraordinary accomplishment.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#82

Post by elevensies » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 9:16 PM UTC

drcross wrote: post #76

EDIT: JWZ disagrees that this is all rainbows and puppydogs. Archive.org link because JWZ dislikes HN- https://web.archive.org/web/20160818144913/https://www.jwz.o...

NSFW due to testicle.

JWZ has some referrer detection so you might want to open it in a private tab to get around.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#83

Post by goatlover » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 9:18 PM UTC

hmate9 wrote: post #74

Not sure why there is a lot of negativity here. It doesn't seem that ridiculous of a goal. I think by 2100 we will have extremely powerful AI that will make fighting diseases extremely easy compared to methods available today. To be honest, it seems like an achievable goal. I wish Zuckerberg and Chan the best in this.

What sort of diseases do you suppose extremely powerful AI might be able to manufacture for militaries, terrorists, dissatisfied hackers, etc?

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#84

Post by ColinCochrane » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

drcross wrote: post #76

EDIT: JWZ disagrees that this is all rainbows and puppydogs. Archive.org link because JWZ dislikes HN- https://web.archive.org/web/20160818144913/https://www.jwz.o...

Beware to anyone who follows that link directly (jwz isn't a big fan of HN referrals, for those who don't know).

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#85

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

hmate9 wrote: post #74

Not sure why there is a lot of negativity here. It doesn't seem that ridiculous of a goal. I think by 2100 we will have extremely powerful AI that will make fighting diseases extremely easy compared to methods available today. To be honest, it seems like an achievable goal. I wish Zuckerberg and Chan the best in this.

[deleted]

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#86

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

hmate9 wrote: post #74

Not sure why there is a lot of negativity here. It doesn't seem that ridiculous of a goal. I think by 2100 we will have extremely powerful AI that will make fighting diseases extremely easy compared to methods available today. To be honest, it seems like an achievable goal. I wish Zuckerberg and Chan the best in this.

[deleted]

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#87

Post by xyzzy123 » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 9:19 PM UTC

hmate9 wrote: post #74

Not sure why there is a lot of negativity here. It doesn't seem that ridiculous of a goal. I think by 2100 we will have extremely powerful AI that will make fighting diseases extremely easy compared to methods available today. To be honest, it seems like an achievable goal. I wish Zuckerberg and Chan the best in this.

It's about as realistic as Facebook (or any big company really) being able to fix all the legacy issues in their own codebases. Except way less achievable.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#88

Post by karmicthreat » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 9:20 PM UTC

By 2100 I hope we have a patchable structures that just need an electronic update to generate the new immune cell/protein/expression.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#89

Post by zach » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 9:21 PM UTC

elevensies wrote: post #82

drcross wrote: post #76

EDIT: JWZ disagrees that this is all rainbows and puppydogs. Archive.org link because JWZ dislikes HN- https://web.archive.org/web/20160818144913/https://www.jwz.o...

NSFW due to testicle. JWZ has some referrer detection so you might want to open it in a private tab to get around.

And a perfect illustration of why "I'll just leave this here" is so much worse than a simple description of the link target.

Re: Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

#90

Post by user731955373 » Wed, Sep 21, 2016, 9:21 PM UTC

kendallpark wrote: post #75

I'm glad they're putting money into medical research, but I kinda roll my eyes when people make big claims about curing X, especially when X is something incredibly broad like "cancer" or in this case, "all diseases." AI/ML has barely scratched the surface of its potential in medicine, however, I find it naive to think that you can throw AI/ML at any random disease and always get a cure. Even after a century. Will we…

"yes we can!" built the atomic bomb.