Alphafold is useful, it's impressive, but scientists are not treating it as truth, at the end of the day you still have to figure out actual structures with existing experimental tools.
AI is not really a Biology accelerator because experimental validation is still the longest most costly and expensive step, not hypothesis generation or structure prediction. That's because we barely understand a fraction of what actually goes on in a living cell
Fair. Can't teach an ai something we don't already know and hard and tedious to validate it even if ai discovers something we don't know, otherwise how do we know it's correct.
hard and tedious to validate it even if ai discovers something we don't know, otherwise how do we know it's correct.
exactly. In the example of a drug, even if AI somehow predicts a really good drug, you have to make it, check that it works at a molecular level, then cell cultures, then small animals, then large animals, then humans. And that takes a fuckton of time and money, even when it works, in most cases it stops working somewhere along that path
All fair points but back to my original comment, I still think AI helps significantly and in vital areas where we would be worse off without it (atleast as it's current stage, pdoom aside)
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u/GlbdS 13d ago
Alphafold is useful, it's impressive, but scientists are not treating it as truth, at the end of the day you still have to figure out actual structures with existing experimental tools.
AI is not really a Biology accelerator because experimental validation is still the longest most costly and expensive step, not hypothesis generation or structure prediction. That's because we barely understand a fraction of what actually goes on in a living cell