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AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interactions of life's molecules

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Re: AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interactions of life's molecules

#491

Post by mistermann »

ajuc wrote: post #413
mistermann wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is an example of something that isn't abstractable?

Stuff that we can't program directly, but can program using machine learning. Speech recognition. OCR. Reccomendation engines. You don't write OCR by going "if there's a line at this angle going for this long and it crosses another line at this angle then it's an A". There's too many variables and influence of each of them is too small and too tightly coupled with others to be able to abstract it into something that…

AI arguably accomplishes this using some form of abstraction though does it not?

Or, consider the art word broadly, artists routinely engage in various forms of unusual abstraction.

Re: AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interactions of life's molecules

#492

Post by moomin »

nybsjytm wrote: post #430
moomin wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone remember how he marketed his computer games?

No, how?

Massively overpromising unachievable things. From wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic:_The_Revolution

Initial previews of Republic in 2000 focused upon the purported level of detail behind the game's engine, the "Totality Engine". Described as "the most advanced graphics engine ever seen, (with) no upper bound of on the number of polygons and objects", it was claimed the game could "render scenes with an unlimited number of polygons in real time".[14] Tech demonstrations of Republic at this time showcased a high polygonal level of detail,[21] with the claim that players would be able to zoom smoothly from the buildings in Novistrana to assets such as flowers upon the balconies of buildings with no loss of detail.[22] The game was further purported to have artificial intelligence that would simulate "approximately one million individual citizens" at a high level of detail,[23][19] each with "their own unique and specific AI" comprising "their own daily routine, emotions, beliefs and loyalties"

I feel like it's always worth bearing in mind when he talks about upcoming capability.

Re: AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interactions of life's molecules

#493

Post by ajuc »

mistermann wrote: post #491
ajuc wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stuff that we can't program directly, but can program using machine learning. Speech recognition. OCR. Reccomendation engines. You don't write OCR by going "if there's a line at this angle going for this long and it crosses another line at this angle then it's an A". There's too many variables and influence of each of them is too small and too tightly coupled with others to be able to abstract it into something that…

AI arguably accomplishes this using some form of abstraction though does it not? Or, consider the art word broadly, artists routinely engage in various forms of unusual abstraction.

> AI arguably accomplishes this using some form of abstraction though does it not?

It's unabstractable for people, because the most abstract model that works still has far too many variables for our puny brains.

> artists routinely engage in various forms of unusual abstraction

Abstraction in art is just another, unrelated meaning of the word. Like execution of a program vs execution of a person. You could argue executing the journalist for his opinions isn't bad, because execution of mspaint.exe is perfectly fine, but it won't get you far :)

Re: AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interactions of life's molecules

#494

Post by AlexCoventry »

kriro wrote: post #487
AlexCoventry wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you train for strategic thinking in chess? I read a book on positional chess once, but that's as far as I've gone.

The first thing I'd recommend is constantly evaluating positions from a strategic POV ("Evaluate like a GM" is a good book, alternatively look at a lot of positions and evaluate like you were an engine and then engine check). Second (or first if you lack even the basics to do said evaluation) is understand strategic concepts. A good starting point would be "Simple Chess" the next step would be pawn structures ("Power…

Thanks.

Re: AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interactions of life's molecules

#495

Post by Xeyz0r »

uptownfunk wrote: post #176

Very sad to see they did not make it open source. When you have a technology that has the potential to be a gateway for drug development, to the cures of new diseases, and instead you choose to make it closed, it is a very huge disservice to the community at large. Sure, release your own product alongside it, but making it closed source does not help the scientific community upon which all these innovations were buil…

Openness and collaboration could have far-reaching implications for public health and well-being but there are lots of aspects of being open

Re: AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interactions of life's molecules

#496

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

goggy_googy wrote: post #168
perihelions wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- "Imagine the goodwill for humanity for releasing these pure research systems for free." The entire point[0] is that they want to sell an API to drug-developer labs, at exclusive-monopoly pricing. Those labs in turn discover life-saving drugs, and recoup their costs from e.g. parents of otherwise-terminally-ill children—again, priced as an exclusive monopoly. [0] As signaled by "it is not possible to obtain structur…

What makes this such a "deeply broken situation"? I agree that late-stage capitalism can create really tough situations for poor families trying to afford drugs. At the same time, I don't know any other incentive structure that would have brought us a breakthrough like AlphaFold this soon. For the first time in history, we have ML models that are beating out the scientific models by huge margins. The very fact that t…

It is such a surprise when economics and philosophy of morality end up proving that it was a moral duty of large tech companies and billionaires to become filthy rich. Those people were working for the good of humanity all along, we just didn't look at the data close enough to get it.

Well, allegedly.

Re: AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interactions of life's molecules

#497

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

dumpsterdiver wrote: post #299
chasd00 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all you can do is predict an outcome without being able to explain how then what have you really discovered? Asking someone to just believe you can predict outcomes without any reasoning as to how, even if you're always right, sounds like the concept of faith in religion.

> what have you really discovered? You’ve discovered magic. When you read about a wizard using magic to lay waste to invading armies, how much value would you guess the armies place in whether or not the wizard truly understands the magic being used against them? Probably none. Because the fact that the wizard doesn’t fully understand why magic works does not prevent the wizard from using it to hand invaders their as…

Do you know what the stories say happens to wizards who don't understand magic?

https://youtu.be/B4M-54cEduo?si=RoRZIyWRULUnNKLM

Re: AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interactions of life's molecules

#498

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

toxik wrote: post #257
jprete wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The goal of science has always been to discover underlying principles and not merely to predict the outcome of experiments. I don't see any way to classify an opaque ML model as a scientific artifact since by definition it can't reveal the underlying principles. Maybe one could claim the ML model itself is the scientist and everyone else is just feeding it data. I doubt human scientists would be comfortable with that…

Kepler famously compiled troves of data on the night sky, and just fitted some functions to them. He could not explain why but he could say what. Was he not a scientist?

Sure he was. And then Newton came along and said it's all because of gravity and Kepler's laws were nothing but his laws of motion applied to planets.

Newton was a bit of a brat but everybody accepted his explanation. Then the problem turned to trying to explain gravity.

Thus science advances, one explanation at a time.

Re: AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interactions of life's molecules

#499

Post by toxik »

jprete wrote: post #426
toxik wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kepler famously compiled troves of data on the night sky, and just fitted some functions to them. He could not explain why but he could say what. Was he not a scientist?

He did attempt to explain why. Wikipedia: "On 4 February 1600, Kepler met Tycho Brahe....Tycho guarded his data closely, but was impressed by Kepler's theoretical ideas and soon allowed him more access. Kepler planned to test his theory from Mysterium Cosmographicum based on the Mars data, but he estimated that the work would take up to two years (since he was not allowed to simply copy the data for his own use)."

Mixed it up! I meant Tycho Brahe actually.

Re: AlphaFold 3 predicts the structure and interactions of life's molecules

#500

Post by tecleandor »

nico wrote: post #222
moconnor wrote: post #32

Stepping back, the high-order bit here is an ML method is beating physically-based methods for accurately predicting the world. What happens when the best methods for computational fluid dynamics, molecular dynamics, nuclear physics are all uninterpretable ML models? Does this decouple progress from our current understanding of the scientific process - moving to better and better models of the world without human-int…

Even if we don’t understand the models themselves, you can still use them as a basis for understanding For example, I have no idea how a computer works in every minute detail (ie, exactly the physics and chemistry of every process that happens in real time), but I have enough of an understanding of what to do with it, that I can use it as an incredibly useful tool for many things Definitely interesting times!

Not the same. There is a difference between "I cannot understand the deeper details of certain model but some others can and there's the possibility of explaining it in detail" and "Nobody can understand it and there's not a clear cause-effect that we know" .

Except for weird cases, computers (or cars, or cameras, or lots of other man made devices) are clearly known and you (or another specialist) can clearly show why a device does X when you input Y on it.

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