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Zuckerberg and Chan aim to tackle all disease by 2100

bbc.com

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

#311

Post by sriku »

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…

I, for one, am imagining a news item 84 years into the future - "how letting people share lunch pictures and stalk other people has led to the eradication of all diseases".

The history of technology is filled with cross pollinations of that kind - ex: GPUs invented for high quality 3D amusement being used for AI and protein folding research.

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

#312

Post by tomhoward »

joe_the_user wrote: post #103
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…

One would roll one's eyes if someone promised to fix every single bug in a vast, buggy, fifty-year old software project. But just ending cancer would essentially be a project for externally ameliorating, not even fixing, the bugs of 4 billion years of (genetic) code, code that "just happened" with "bugs" that survived because they weren't selected against.

That position assumes things about the fundamental nature of cancer that are not at all proven.

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

#313

Post by Chathamization »

segmondy wrote: post #226
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…

People would have rolled their eyes, if someone said. I wanted to connect the world. I want to connect virutally everyone, where you can just reach anyone at anyplace at any time for cheap. 30 yrs ago, in a different part of the world. My father had to catch a bus from a village to the city, then catch a plane to a major city to make international phone call to the US to his business partners. Today, people in that s…

> I wanted to connect the world. I want to connect virutally everyone, where you can just reach anyone at anyplace at any time for cheap.

If we're talking about the same time frame, 84 years ago, I don't think most people would doubt that it could happen. This is a period where there was an enormous growth in telecommunications, and I don't think most people thought it was obviously going to suddenly stop and stagnate for 84 years.

My guess is the idea wouldn't have seemed implausible even earlier. Once the telegraph came along, it probably seemed like at least a possibility.

However, if a wealthy individual 84 years ago who hadn't been involved in telecommunications decided to throw some money at it and said they were going to connect everyone 84 years in the future, people would probably be skeptical - and rightly so. Especially if the amount of money was less than many of the smaller players in the industry.

As the article points out (about the Zuckerberg effort), "One British charity - Cancer Research UK - is likely to spend more in that time on just one disease."

And "connect the world" is vague enough that it's easier to claim success with low hanging fruit. This is more like "I want to be able to instantly transfer anything anywhere in 84 years."

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

#314

Post by edanm »

apatters wrote: post #293

This is difficult to say without sounding snarky, but will 'all disease' include the mental disorders (both discovered and undiscovered) that Facebook inflicts upon its users? Depression from seeing other people's perfect lives, obsessive compulsive dopamine-fueled update checking to maximize Zuck's ad revenue etc. I'm glad he's spending his money this way but how about the way he makes it. Facebook is not a particul…

I'm pretty sure the majority of people disagree with you on the value of Facebook. I know I do. I certainly disagree with the claim that Facebook "inflicts" mental disorders on its users.

So I'm not sure how you expect Mark Zuckerberg to "fix" a problem with his product that he probably doesn't think exists.

And may I add that, if every time someone decides to donate money to charity, people "beat up" on them, it's a pretty big disincentive to donate to charity.

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

#315

Post by projektir »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #282

I don't think it's a good thing to make us disease-free in terms of evolution. I think it's better to just cure the diseases that kill us ( long/short-term) eg. cancer, aids, ... or make us immoble for longer term ( parkinson, ..) Why? Because i think the best defense is a good immune system. You don't get a good immune system by staying inside and infection free and using medication all the time. Let people become s…

You're essentially advocating that a huge amount of people would die off, FYI.

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

#316

Post by therealbobsmoot »

estefan wrote: post #307
apatters wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I'm not. Do you always assume that people who have differing opinions from yours must be heartless monsters and insult them? That must be a serious impediment to constructive discussion. To put my point succinctly Zuckerberg hasn't demonstrated a great deal of social responsibility in running his business. There are problems much closer to his influence (literally caused by his product) which he doesn't even disc…

The guy's running a business. He has a responsibility to his shareholders to make it as valuable as he can. Sticky apps/web sites lead to more ad impressions and higher prices. His business does not give people cancer or HIV. You may find life more rewarding to assume people are good and try to see the best in people. As Dale Carnegie says in How to Win Friends and Influence People, if you assume the best in people a…

and yet you do the exact opposite - you label the guy pathetic simply because he has a viewpoint that is different to yours.

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

#317

Post by therealbobsmoot »

apatters wrote: post #293

This is difficult to say without sounding snarky, but will 'all disease' include the mental disorders (both discovered and undiscovered) that Facebook inflicts upon its users? Depression from seeing other people's perfect lives, obsessive compulsive dopamine-fueled update checking to maximize Zuck's ad revenue etc. I'm glad he's spending his money this way but how about the way he makes it. Facebook is not a particul…

I agree, social media is creating new social disorders and providing a platform for people to knowingly or unknowingly destroy their lives. Facebook enables people to display a very skewed version of reality and enough of that in someone's social circle leads to feelings of failure, unworthiness, depression, rejection etc. So whilst this is not a disease to be cured, it is still a health issue.

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

#318

Post by nathan_f77 »

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…

I'm the opposite, I always roll my eyes when doctors say that AI/ML will never replace human doctors, or at least that it can never replace their human intuition or empathy. Human intuition is exactly what will be superseded by machine learning. I know empathy is important, and I read something about lonely people being less likely to have a fast recovery, but it just isn't all that important for accurate diagnoses or treatment.

Further reading from Vinod Khosla: http://fortune.com/2012/12/04/technology-will-replace-80-of-...

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

#319

Post by M_Grey »

user731955373 wrote: post #90
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.

I think he might be an HN user...

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/manhattan_project.png

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

#320

Post by pyrale »

wyager wrote: post #228
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…

General-purpose nanorobotics would pretty much allow us to do arbitrary medical procedures with cell-level accuracy. Cancer would be easy. Modifying brain structure would be easy. Pretty much everything would be easy.

Some sort of high level body magic would work too, I'm thinking about some kind of general purpose blood-magic ritual.

I know optimism in and around computer tech is through the roof, but the levels of delusion on tech disruption topics in our community never ceases to amaze me.

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