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Isomorphic Labs: Reimagining drug discovery with an AI-first approach

isomorphiclabs.com

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Re: Isomorphic Labs: Reimagining drug discovery with an AI-first approach

#3
> At its most fundamental level, I think biology can be thought of as an information processing system, albeit an extraordinarily complex and dynamic one. Taking this perspective implies there may be a common underlying structure between biology and information science - an isomorphic mapping between the two - hence the name of the company

Re: Isomorphic Labs: Reimagining drug discovery with an AI-first approach

#6
post #5

Can someone explain to me why this should be an entirely new company (subsidiary) rather than folding DeepMind's capabilities into Verily and Calico? Are these different groups siloed from one another within Google?

Calico seems to be focused on combating aging.

Re: Isomorphic Labs: Reimagining drug discovery with an AI-first approach

#7
post #5

Can someone explain to me why this should be an entirely new company (subsidiary) rather than folding DeepMind's capabilities into Verily and Calico? Are these different groups siloed from one another within Google?

I believe there is a lot of internal politics and dynamics playing here.

If you are Demis Hassabis and want to lead this new initiative:

- Why would you want to report to the CEO of another subsidiary instead of spinning-off another entity within the Alphabet conglomerate?

- You can let the DeepMind team focus in their original areas of expertise.

- You will have a new (and $$$$) budget to hire computational biology PhDs

- With the new entity, you can fail a lot and not make Verily and Calico look bad (inside and out XYZ)

If you are Verily and/or Calico:

- You don't want a newcomer bring the exciting new projects and ruin your projects, budgets, initiatives

- [very speculative] You don't like Hassabis' progress (or is envy of)

- You think this new project will fail and don't this under your umbrella

Re: Isomorphic Labs: Reimagining drug discovery with an AI-first approach

#8
post #5

Can someone explain to me why this should be an entirely new company (subsidiary) rather than folding DeepMind's capabilities into Verily and Calico? Are these different groups siloed from one another within Google?

I believe there is a lot of internal politics and dynamics playing here. If you are Demis Hassabis and want to lead this new initiative: - Why would you want to report to the CEO of another subsidiary instead of spinning-off another entity within the Alphabet conglomerate? - You can let the DeepMind team focus in their original areas of expertise. - You will have a new (and $$$$) budget to hire computational biology…

precisely this

Re: Isomorphic Labs: Reimagining drug discovery with an AI-first approach

#9
post #5

Can someone explain to me why this should be an entirely new company (subsidiary) rather than folding DeepMind's capabilities into Verily and Calico? Are these different groups siloed from one another within Google?

I believe there is a lot of internal politics and dynamics playing here. If you are Demis Hassabis and want to lead this new initiative: - Why would you want to report to the CEO of another subsidiary instead of spinning-off another entity within the Alphabet conglomerate? - You can let the DeepMind team focus in their original areas of expertise. - You will have a new (and $$$$) budget to hire computational biology…

Does anyone have a good idea what Verily or Calico actually do, or have done?

Re: Isomorphic Labs: Reimagining drug discovery with an AI-first approach

#10
> [...] there may be a common underlying structure between biology and information science - an isomorphic mapping between the two - hence the name of the company. Biology is likely far too complex and messy to ever be encapsulated as a simple set of neat mathematical equations.

...uses a neatly-defined mathematical term to name the company, then rejects the idea of neat mathematics in practice.

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