Physics prize one goes to AI, chemistry too. What next? Nobel in Literature goes to ChatGPT?
Jokes aside, I think the chemistry prize seems to make a bit more sense to me than physics one.
Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction
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Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction
#112Nobel peace prize has countless times been awarded to a group of people or institution. It is differently controlled but the idea is not unprecedented.
The rules are different
Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction
#113I wonder why various outlets, including DeepMind's blog, say that John Jumper is a "Senior Research Scientist". That's L5 which sounds like quite a low rank for a Nobel prize winner. I checked his LinkedIn and he's a director, which is around L8. I thought that maybe he was L5 during the publishing of the results, but no, he was either L6 or L7.
Maybe "Senior Research Scientist" sounds more respectable among the intended audience. A research scientist is usually an independent researcher rather than someone working in another person's team, while "senior" indicates that they have been in an independent role for a while. A director, on the other hand, is someone who failed to avoid administrative duties, and it doesn't imply any degree of seniority.
Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction
#114I think it's still too early to know if AlphaFold is a massively overfitted statistical model that will utterly fail on novel structures.
The prize winners are ultimately selected by a group of mid-age to old professors. And to tell the truth (I work at a research institute in Stockholm), some of the old folks seem to have huge FOMO. They know that they cannot keep up themselves, they have no idea (and no way of finding out) who is actually good and who is just pretending, which leads to recruitment of an 'interesting' bunch of young group leaders. Some of them are surely good, but I know of at least one guy who holds presentations as if he invented AlphaFold himself, while having contributed one single paper of interest to the field. Large turn off for me.
Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction
#115Anyone else think that giving a nobel prize to the CEO of the company is absurd?
Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction
#116[deleted]
Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction
#117I think I disagree with most of the comments here stating it’s premature to give the Nobel to AlphaFold.
I’m in biotech academia and it has changed things already. Yes the protein folding problem isn’t “solved” but no problem in biology ever is. Comparing to previous bio/chem Nobel winners like Crispr, touch receptors, quantum dots, click chemistry, I do think AlphaFold already has reached sufficient level of impact.
Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction
#118[flagged]
Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction
#119[flagged]
You know they actually made a huge chemistry breakthrough though?
Re: Chemistry Nobel: Computational protein design and protein structure prediction
#120Nobel prize committee really sending some messages this year on what constitutes benefiting humanity the most.
This was an incredible breakthrough.