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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

#121

Post by nixos »

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.

Which is _much_ (orders of magnitude) easier than curing Cancer

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

#122

Post by SEJeff »

melling wrote: post #31
SEJeff wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the Gates foundation's existing accomplishments on eradicating diseases, of which Malaria and Polio are shining examples. While we've had Polio vaccines and Malaria pills for years in much of the western world, much of the poorer parts of the world aren't so lucky. So instead of duplicating something that already exists and works well , partner with them and get it done faster together. References: http://ww…

They aren't duplicate efforts. You keep missing that point.

"Cure all diseases" is a bit hand wavy just like a static code analyzer claiming to "find all software defects".

What is the point that I'm missing? They don't really want to cure all diseases?

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

#123

Post by brianwawok »

xyzzy123 wrote: post #87
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.

If you declared feature lock I bet you could get Facebook to have 100x less bugs in 10 years. If we aren't also genetically enhancing yourself, at least it could be a semi fixed target.

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

#124

Post by iaw »

nixos wrote: post #121
user731955373 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"yes we can!" built the atomic bomb.

Which is _much_ (orders of magnitude) easier than curing Cancer

Arguable. We can only compare difficulty after the fact, if Einstein hadn't rolled along with relativity and 3 decade gap for research, the atomic bomb wouldn't have been possible.

There may be a 'relativity' level discovery in biology/aging/cancer that will change the historic perspective. We can't know until after the fact.

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

#125

Post by SEJeff »

maxerickson wrote: post #12
SEJeff wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it would have been much better for them to simply partner with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where they're actually curing diseases. They've literally almost eradicated polio globally[1]. [1] http://www.gatesfoundation.org/What-We-Do/Global-Development/Polio

Largely by funding the effort. http://www.polioeradication.org/Portals/0/Document/Financing... Which I don't mean as a criticism, it's just that they aren't really driving the effort, they are participating by providing a lot of resources.

Based on that link, the Gates foundation is providing $2.86 billion. The second biggest donor is the US Government at $2.64 billion.

I'd consider the entity with the most money in the game as the driver of really anything.

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

#126

Post by johansch »

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.

Mark ("and Priscilla") are pledging $3B.

The Manhattan project cost was "about $26 billion in 2016 dollars" according to the Wikipedia article. They are short $23B.

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

#127

Post by SEJeff »

melling wrote: post #29
SEJeff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did. Did you know that much of Africa didn't have access to said vaccine due to funding shortages? This was one of the efforts where the Gates foundation literally just threw money at the problem until it went away.

Sure, I know that. The point of the new effort is trying to cure diseases. That's a completely different type of effort. Getting people together to travel to different parts of the world to make sure people are vaccinated, for example, requires a different group of people than scientists researching cures for diseases. Both groups are needed, of course. But you giving the example of "curing" polio as an example of wh…

Ah I see the semantics of your argument and you're right.

I just think other than the prestige argument (which is likely what this is) they could actually do more work working with someone who literally spends more on this than the entire USG.

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

#128

Post by sams99 »

The absolutely crazy thing is that in this day and age the vast majority of diagnosed paediatric cancers are not sequenced (no germline, tumor or RNA seq) It actually makes me feel quite sick that there is so much information out there that is not being mined or analyzed.

I hope this money does not go into some sort of "in 100 years from now moonshot" as opposed to, we have huge urgent needs for money right now.

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

#129

Post by M_Grey »

jonknee wrote: post #105
M_Grey wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And now it's practically useless. It's not a one-sided battle we're in, and we're heavily outnumbered.

The point was that so much has changed in the previous ~80 years that I don't think it's ridiculous to think things will be radically different ~80 years into the future.

Barring universally available, and highly advanced nanotech, it's ridiculous to think that all diseases will be "tackled" in ~80 years. In that same time frame it's much more likely that we'll be tackling issues of how to maintain a semblance of civilization, not achieving utopia.

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

#130

Post by zbyte64 »

iaw wrote: post #124
nixos wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is _much_ (orders of magnitude) easier than curing Cancer

Arguable. We can only compare difficulty after the fact, if Einstein hadn't rolled along with relativity and 3 decade gap for research, the atomic bomb wouldn't have been possible. There may be a 'relativity' level discovery in biology/aging/cancer that will change the historic perspective. We can't know until after the fact.

Just from a data volume perspective cancer and atomic bombs are magnitudes apart. Throw in the fact that cancer evolves and understanding those mutations requires unraveling millions of years of evolution and you've got a doozy.
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