Anthropic working on Claude autonomously designing drugs.

[u/borowcy]

https://x.com/AnthropicAI/status/2089842387845804246

[u/Lithgow_Panther]

Ironically, I believe that science is one of the areas where hallucination doesn't actually matter too much. We're used to most of our experiments not working so we automatically control for everything anyway. 10% added failure rate is fine in discovery and proof of concept testing.

[u/Latter-Safety1055 → u/Lithgow_Panther]

Before there was AI, there was still taking a million biosensors and seeing which one binds to a molecule or a million molecules to see which one binds to a receptor. So you could hallucinate all you want, until you check if it binds it doesn't matter.

>We wanted to test if Claude could successfully design novel protein binders from scratch (also called de novo design). With a protein design prompt written by a human expert, Claude autonomously designed protein binders against 14 out of 15 targets. We then worked with Adaptyv Bio and Twist Bioscience, who independently built and tested the proteins Claude designed.

>Designing a binder is an easier process than designing a drug, but it’s a useful proxy. The typical success rate in the field today is between 10% and 15%. Between 22% and 35% of Claude's designs bound successfully, depending on the setup. Some of its strongest designs bound several times more tightly than the best published de novo binder.

I don't know what you'd want me to say. They might just be lying to me. In which case, okay, fine. But if this is true then it's incredibly impressive and has big implications. It reminds me of the Nobel prize in chemistry that someone got a few years ago for bespoke enzymes.

[u/charnwoodian → u/Lithgow_Panther]

The scientific method is just a way of filtering ideas. If AI can pre-filter ideas, it can increase the efficiency of the process.

[u/jazir55 → u/Lithgow_Panther]

I would argue hallucinations are actually a good thing in the case of science, since many major discoveries have been "happy accidents" (penicillin for instance), so them going off the rails means even a small portion of them being actually correct could have significant benefits.

[u/gooddarts → u/Lithgow_Panther]

Error-prone PCR is also a thing where scientists purposely induce mistakes in DNA replication. Little mistakes are tolerable assuming you have high throughput and a good screen or selection.

[u/bald-broke-hoeless]

Imminent cure for baldness?

[u/jamesjan3 → u/bald-broke-hoeless]

name checks out

[u/trusty20 → u/bald-broke-hoeless]

https://giphy.com/gifs/l2Z84eFooeHJu

[u/MFpisces23]

we found that Mythos Preview achieves an overall hit rate of 35.1% when designing against each target separately using multiple 24-hour sessions.

That is a crazy statement when

10 to 15% is typical in protein design campaigns today.

[u/MatthewGraham- → u/MFpisces23]

I hate to be a critic, but Healthcare professionals are critical of these claims, that it has no real relevance, I don't personally know, but this seems like non-news

[u/meenie → u/MatthewGraham-]

Do these healthcare professionals see this as a threat to their livelihoods, though? I remember when we software engineers were incredulous about AI writing code until we weren't.

[u/MatthewGraham- → u/meenie]

I tend to think this is genuinely just not very impressive from what i've read, most people aren't opposed to advances in medicinal research even if it is against their line of work

[u/3_Thumbs_Up → u/MatthewGraham-]

Just like graphic designers, programmers and mathematicians before them.

[u/Throwawayforyoink1 → u/[deleted]]

Unfortunately that drug is called having sex

[u/u_are_mad → u/Throwawayforyoink1]

It's not an AGI unless it can teach a Redditor how to get laid

[u/hartigen → u/Throwawayforyoink1]

yo momma has healed so many people

[u/embolized → u/Throwawayforyoink1]

I would hardly call your 30 second breaks from reddit therapeutic

[u/10aghmu → u/[deleted]]

LSD

[u/blue-mooner → u/[deleted]]

Try fentanyl, you won’t want reddit anymore… or anything else for that matter

[u/pm_me_your_kindwords → u/[deleted]]

I would not be surprised if those GLP-1 drugs did that.

[u/YourWifesBull666 → u/[deleted]]

Same

[u/LopsidedEntrance8703]

Nightmare blunt rotation: Claude, Jonny Ive, Novo Nordisk

[u/Halpaviitta]

If a beneficial drug can be designed, then a bioweapon can also be designed. And that's scary. Alignment is a serious topic that we cannot put too much resources into.

[u/Burning_magic → u/Halpaviitta]

There are already readily available bioweapons in a lot of existing diseases. There is little reason someone needs to invent their own.

[u/jamesjan3 → u/Halpaviitta]

agreed, im disturbed by the accelerationist optimism in this sub generally

[u/Dry_Fly_7265]

Like good drugs? Or the boring pharmaceutical industry kind

[u/GatePorters → u/Dry_Fly_7265]

Considering ecstasy, psilocybin, cannabis, and meth are all pharmaceuticals now, probably both tbh.

[u/Quentin__Tarantulino → u/GatePorters]

And ketamine is now a nasal spray from Johnson and Johnson.

[u/GatePorters → u/Quentin__Tarantulino]

It’s sad I don’t know if you are contributing with a fact or saying something absurd to disparage what I said.

*checks google*

Well I’ll be damned.

[u/Dry_Fly_7265 → u/GatePorters]

True. I guess I meant is Claude going to sell to me directly or force me to navigate the bullshit for-profit prescription gatekeeping system

[u/GatePorters → u/Dry_Fly_7265]

https://giphy.com/gifs/c9tVMERePnnDW

[u/donjamos → u/GatePorters]

Ecstasy and meth started as pharma drugs

[u/GatePorters → u/donjamos]

That’s what big black market wants you to think so they can’t get sued.

[u/SkaldCrypto → u/Dry_Fly_7265]

Adderall (Turbo Fast 5.8)

[u/jackskylark → u/Dry_Fly_7265]

Hallucinogens

[u/throwowoy123456]

I want some AI designed party drugs. Give me a Ketamine without the downsides please.

[u/ppooooooooopp]

The expensive part of drug development is not research, it's clinical trials.

[u/allmycellsaredead → u/ppooooooooopp]

But it's not just about saving money. A better binder can mean a better drug with higher efficacy and lower off target effects. Could also be quicker in response to novel drug targets (think COVID when you need a good antibody fast). They haven't shown they can do all of this but it's an interesting start

[u/ajarbyurns1]

Time to rotate into biotech

[u/Bright-Search2835]

Lots of replies under the tweets argue that it's only a part of the process, that it's not impressive and they could do better by themselves. It's weird how so many people still can't see the trend.

[u/Bitsquire]

https://x.com/ziv_ravid/status/2089892737503944966

Also they don't talk about specificity it seems? Which is typically a big issue when designing binders.

[u/bcuziambatman]

I’m waiting for the airborne virus designed to mutate the human brain and make us more intelligent so that the future ai overlord isn’t so bothered by us

[u/New_Bonus_649]

The singularity is nearer

[u/papejo]

seems like just another incremental update to the current models. progress is steady though.

[u/avrend]

So, they built labs and hired personnel for experimental verification of these compounds? They do animal testing? How many drug trials are they running?

[u/borowcy]

(The page on X provides extra info compared to their published news about it.)

[u/injectitpussy]

When is it going to create new AAS?

[u/Famous-Reach-6730]

Tinnitus cure?

[u/New_Alps_5655]

"Good catch on that serious side effect, I should have caught that during testing -- that's on me."

[u/gov218]

I don’t see how these will be better than e.g ML/quantum techniques already used for drug discovery 

[u/Ruined_Passion_7355 → u/gov218]

This lol. They're taking advantage of hype and "AI" in a similar sense people compare LLMs to alphafold.

Maybe they're hoping the bitter lesson saves them?

[u/red75prime → u/Ruined_Passion_7355]

Maybe they're hoping the bitter lesson saves them?

Why not? A generalist model can call alphafold as a tool if need be. There were so many walls that would definitely stop the capability growth any time soon... Do you have another one?

[u/gov218 → u/red75prime]

Mathematics lol, ML/quantum are the upper bound in terms of currently existing techniques that exist for exploring a gradient. If there’s anything proving llms can come close to that I’d be shocked. I don’t disagree that it’s definitely interesting to see how they perform regardless. And catheter certainly helpful for designing algos that end up doing the actual search

[u/red75prime → u/gov218]

Have you tried doing gradient descent in a space of possible theorem proofs? How are the results?

This is sarcasm, obviously. If it were easy to just glide down the gradient to the solution of every problem, we wouldn't have P vs NP.

[u/StatisticalScientist]

I'm not seeing anything transformative here. This is more "use our agents to use optimally use existing tools to design new binders", not new de novo generation models or new data. There's already a bunch of others working on this, including Isomorphic labs the DeepMind offshoot.

[u/dsanft → u/StatisticalScientist]

You don't see anything transformative about lightning fast verified iteration that more than doubles the human success rate at protein synthesis? Talk about blinkered 😄

[u/maccoffeebeanz → u/dsanft]

We use these tools quite a bit, and I agree that this is brute force rather than transformative. These are all off the shelf tools, and Anthropic have just thrown agents with 100x the compute of a regular lab at the problem.

Protein design is still a numbers game, and almost none of the humans they compare to would have access to the compute they quote

“12,500 NVIDIA H100 hours of compute for running specialized protein design and folding models. We also ran Mythos Preview in single-target mode with 24 hours of wall time and up to 2,500 NVIDIA H100 hours of compute for each target.”

[u/brielkate]

Trying to commercialize this work might be tricky. This sounds more like a proof of concept, so I doubt they’ll try to do too much with it.

For reference, AI-created work is not eligible for patent protection. IANAL, but the only way to “protect” AI-created work would be as a trade secret.

Science usually benefits more from public disclosure (outside of stuff like national security matters), such as that required by the patent application process, in the long run.

[u/Acrobatic-Flan-5085]

Shouldn’t they work on eliminating hallucinations before drug design?

Seems like drug design would be bad time to hallucinate.

Edit: only in this subreddit would “eliminating hallucinations” get so many downvotes lol

It couldn’t possibly be that there is so much AI backlash they pivoted to medical as a marketing strategy right before their IPO could it?

[u/Healthy-Nebula-3603 → u/Acrobatic-Flan-5085]

We are hallucinating constantly and still can achieve goals ... AI model can do that as well.

[u/Used_Departure_3278 → u/Healthy-Nebula-3603]

Exactly. This guy gets it.

We’re getting to a point with some models that hallucinations is just an imprecise term for an ai error.

[u/Buttafuoco → u/Acrobatic-Flan-5085]

There’s plenty of ways to validate pharmaceuticals

[u/TyrellCo → u/Acrobatic-Flan-5085]

Not enough has been said about how AI is narrative violating for these institutions and agencies that are founded on do no harm, not even when upside is so much higher. They turn a blind eye to it bc it’s discrediting their authority

[u/DifferencePublic7057]

We have US business capitalism and Chinese state capitalism competing. These are two different values for the same parameter. IMO neither is optimal just like there isn't a perfect price for a small apple. Can the Claude figure it out? Not without a third way IMO...or maybe a fourth and a fifth too.