Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AlphaGenome: AI for better understanding the genome

deepmind.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 193 posts

Re: AlphaGenome: AI for better understanding the genome

#31

Post by agumonkey »

deepdarkforest wrote: post #19
dekhn wrote: post #2

When I went to work at Google in 2008 I immediately advocated for spending significant resources on the biological sciences (this was well before DM started working on biology). I reasoned that Google had the data mangling and ML capabilities required to demonstrate world-leading results (and hopefully guide the way so other biologists could reproduce their techniques). We made some progress- we used exacycle to demo…

> Sundar is a really uninspiring leader I understand, but he made google a cash machine. Last quarter BEFORE he was CEO in 2015, google made a quarterly profit of around 3B. Q1 2025 was 35B. a 10x profit growth at this scale well, its unprecedented, the numbers are inspiring themselves, that's his job. He made mistakes sure, but he stuck to google's big gun, ads, and it paid off. The transition to AI started late but…

Their brand is almost cooked though. At least the legacy search part. Maybe they'll morph into AI center of the future, but "Google" has been washed away.

Re: AlphaGenome: AI for better understanding the genome

#32

Post by bitpush »

modeless wrote: post #25
deepdarkforest wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sundar is a really uninspiring leader I understand, but he made google a cash machine. Last quarter BEFORE he was CEO in 2015, google made a quarterly profit of around 3B. Q1 2025 was 35B. a 10x profit growth at this scale well, its unprecedented, the numbers are inspiring themselves, that's his job. He made mistakes sure, but he stuck to google's big gun, ads, and it paid off. The transition to AI started late but…

Like Ballmer, he was set up for success by his predecessor(s), and didn't derail strong growth in existing businesses but made huge fumbles elsewhere. The question is, who is Google's Satya Nadella? Demis?

Since we're on the topic of Microsoft, I'm sure you'd agree that Satya has done a phenomenal job. If you look objectively, what is Satya's accomplishments? One word - Azure. Azure is #2, behind AWS because Satya's effective and strategic decisions. But that's it. The "vibes" for Microsoft has changed, but MS hasnt innovated at all.

Satya looked like a genius last year with OpenAI partnership, but it is becoming increasingly clear that MS has no strategy. Nobody is using Github Copilot (pioneer) or MS Copilot (a joke). They dont have any foundational models, nor a consumer product. Bing is still.. bing, and has barely gained any market share.

Re: AlphaGenome: AI for better understanding the genome

#33

Post by smokel »

jeffbee wrote: post #5
Scaevolus wrote: post #4

Naturally, the (AI-generated?) hero image doesn't properly render the major and minor grooves. :-)

And yet still manages to be 4MB over the wire.

That's only on high-resolution screens. On lower resolution screens it can go as low as 178,820 bytes. Amazing.

Re: AlphaGenome: AI for better understanding the genome

#34

Post by bitpush »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #28
deepdarkforest wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sundar is a really uninspiring leader I understand, but he made google a cash machine. Last quarter BEFORE he was CEO in 2015, google made a quarterly profit of around 3B. Q1 2025 was 35B. a 10x profit growth at this scale well, its unprecedented, the numbers are inspiring themselves, that's his job. He made mistakes sure, but he stuck to google's big gun, ads, and it paid off. The transition to AI started late but…

He delivered revenue growth by enshittifying Goog's products. Gemini is catching up because Demis is a boss and TPUs are a real competitive advantage.

You either attribute both good and bad things to the CEO, or dont. If enshittifying is CEO's fault, then so is Gemini's success.

Re: AlphaGenome: AI for better understanding the genome

#35

Post by bitpush »

agumonkey wrote: post #31
deepdarkforest wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sundar is a really uninspiring leader I understand, but he made google a cash machine. Last quarter BEFORE he was CEO in 2015, google made a quarterly profit of around 3B. Q1 2025 was 35B. a 10x profit growth at this scale well, its unprecedented, the numbers are inspiring themselves, that's his job. He made mistakes sure, but he stuck to google's big gun, ads, and it paid off. The transition to AI started late but…

Their brand is almost cooked though. At least the legacy search part. Maybe they'll morph into AI center of the future, but "Google" has been washed away.

World is much.. much bigger than HN bubble. Last year, we were all so convinced that Microsoft had it all figured out, and now look at them. Billion is a very, very large number, and sometimes you fail to appreciate how big that is.

Re: AlphaGenome: AI for better understanding the genome

#36

Post by modeless »

bitpush wrote: post #32
modeless wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Like Ballmer, he was set up for success by his predecessor(s), and didn't derail strong growth in existing businesses but made huge fumbles elsewhere. The question is, who is Google's Satya Nadella? Demis?

Since we're on the topic of Microsoft, I'm sure you'd agree that Satya has done a phenomenal job. If you look objectively, what is Satya's accomplishments? One word - Azure. Azure is #2, behind AWS because Satya's effective and strategic decisions. But that's it. The "vibes" for Microsoft has changed, but MS hasnt innovated at all. Satya looked like a genius last year with OpenAI partnership, but it is becoming incre…

Microsoft has become a lot more friendly to open source under Satya. VSCode, GitHub, and WSL happened during his tenure, and probably wouldn't have happened under Ballmer. Turning the ship from a focus on protecting platform lock-in to meeting developers where they are is a huge accomplishment IMO.

Re: AlphaGenome: AI for better understanding the genome

#37

Post by agumonkey »

bitpush wrote: post #35
agumonkey wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their brand is almost cooked though. At least the legacy search part. Maybe they'll morph into AI center of the future, but "Google" has been washed away.

World is much.. much bigger than HN bubble. Last year, we were all so convinced that Microsoft had it all figured out, and now look at them. Billion is a very, very large number, and sometimes you fail to appreciate how big that is.

Oh I'm conveying opinions other than mines, tech people I work with, that are very very removed from the HN mindset actually, were shitting on google search for a long time this week.

Re: AlphaGenome: AI for better understanding the genome

#38

Post by varelse »

bitpush wrote: post #9
dekhn wrote: post #2

When I went to work at Google in 2008 I immediately advocated for spending significant resources on the biological sciences (this was well before DM started working on biology). I reasoned that Google had the data mangling and ML capabilities required to demonstrate world-leading results (and hopefully guide the way so other biologists could reproduce their techniques). We made some progress- we used exacycle to demo…

[flagged]

[dead]

Re: AlphaGenome: AI for better understanding the genome

#39

Post by fwip »

bitpush wrote: post #34
CuriouslyC wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He delivered revenue growth by enshittifying Goog's products. Gemini is catching up because Demis is a boss and TPUs are a real competitive advantage.

You either attribute both good and bad things to the CEO, or dont. If enshittifying is CEO's fault, then so is Gemini's success.

Why? We've all seen organizations in which some things happen because of the CEO, and others happen in spite of them.

Re: AlphaGenome: AI for better understanding the genome

#40

Post by SV_BubbleTime »

deepdarkforest wrote: post #19
dekhn wrote: post #2

When I went to work at Google in 2008 I immediately advocated for spending significant resources on the biological sciences (this was well before DM started working on biology). I reasoned that Google had the data mangling and ML capabilities required to demonstrate world-leading results (and hopefully guide the way so other biologists could reproduce their techniques). We made some progress- we used exacycle to demo…

> Sundar is a really uninspiring leader I understand, but he made google a cash machine. Last quarter BEFORE he was CEO in 2015, google made a quarterly profit of around 3B. Q1 2025 was 35B. a 10x profit growth at this scale well, its unprecedented, the numbers are inspiring themselves, that's his job. He made mistakes sure, but he stuck to google's big gun, ads, and it paid off. The transition to AI started late but…

I like that you are writing as a defense of Google and Sundar.
Post reply on HN