8 ms·

I think it's more reasonable than it sounds on the surface. People's jobs, the bubble, etc are societal level problems and well beyond what Anthropic could even

by mindwok 1mo ago

I think it's more reasonable than it sounds on the surface. People's jobs, the bubble, etc are societal level problems and well beyond what Anthropic could even hope to influence on their own. Curing cancer sounds insane, but it's also a research problem, not a societal level coordination problem. And one AI has already proved to help with breakthroughs (alphafold). IMO it makes sense for them to shoot for something like that as proof of AI's beneficial sides.

disgruntledphd2 1mo ago
> Curing cancer sounds insane, but it's also a research problem, I just don't buy the AI labs approach to this stuff. Like, unless we can basically simulate the entirety of human biology, I don't really see how LLMs can make progress here. Maths is different as it doesn't require a real-world interface, and programming already (by definition) can be simulated on a computer. Without that, I can't see much (if any) progress being made on domains like biology.
- XorNot 1mo ago
  The real issue is that biology needs actual experiments done in the physical world, which isn't nice and orderly and well behaved and easily loadable onto a 19" rectangular box.
  - bananaflag 1mo ago
    On the other hand, AI means actual experiments done in the physical world but coordinated by an entity that never sleeps and never gets depressed and can multiply itself manifold and always comes up with new ideas.
    - mohamedkoubaa 1mo ago
      That fanatical tireless entity will need access to human tissue.
      - airstrike 1mo ago
        Please don't give them ideas
        mohamedkoubaa 1mo ago
        I assure you they already have these ideas
      - disgruntledphd2 1mo ago
        And hands.
  - blitzar 1mo ago
    There is a lot of computational chemistry and biology done in the early stages of research - there are now multiple orders of magnitude of computation power available that is doing nothing but feeding forward on billions of random numbers.
- mindwok 1mo ago
  I'm a noob on this topic, but I think drug discovery is more amenable to this structurally than other problems. Simulating biology is what we were doing with protein folding before Alphafold, and the search space was far too large to find stuff in reasonable timeframes. Alphafold showed that you could take a physical process and make a neural net clever enough to learn just enough structure that it starts finding things we might care about, and still physically accurate, much faster. Drug discovery is similar AFAIK. The space of possibilities is even larger than protein folding, but it's structurally similar enough that I think AI will help to make progress on the discovery side. Actually getting the drug tested and approved is another matter though for sure.
  - tsimionescu 1mo ago
    There are two relevant problems here, I think. For one, the question for Anthropic is whether LLMs, specifically, not AI techniques more generally, can help significantly with cancer research. And here, all experience so far is that LLMs only really work when they can easily automatically verify their own outputs and self correct - such as in math (using automatic proof verifiers) or programming (using compilers and unit tests). The second problem is that biological research speed is highly dependent on slow biological processes, such as cultures and long term studies. In programming, if an LLM could provide excellent insights and research suggestions 100x faster than a human, it would speed up the work roughly 100x. But in biology, it would only speed up the total work by a small amount - as any insight, even if absolutely brilliant and spot on, would still require months and years of actual experimentation.
    - epihelix 1mo ago
      For drug discovery, you can simulate interactions in silico, driven in an agentic loop via LLM. Mostly stil using non-LLM tools, of course, but it saves time. If I was Dario, and I was after a cynical sales grab to go with the "actually curing cancer!" spiel, I'd probably aim for a drug repurposing strategy. I'd use the above approach to find existing drugs that might target known pathways that drive incurable cancers. I'd only screen compounds with extensive safety data and easy delivery mechanisms, and from the in silico hits, I'd throw a tonne of money at rapidly experimentally screening all those candidates in parallel, and then rapidly push those that worked into clinical trials. I'd assume that, with a small but non-negligible prior, and the money to push through hundreds and hundreds of candidate compounds through at once, I'd have a reasonable chance of getting one drug through to a "Claude Cured Cancer!" show-stopper headline. But I think even then, with all of Anthropic's wealth, you'd need 2 years minimum to move from initial screening targets to a Phase 3 trial. And it would be an almost criminal waste of research funding to get there -- the dollars for discoveries ratio would be appallingly bad. (If I was Dario, and I actually wanted to cure some forms of cancer? I'd just use my obscene profits to fund actual cancer research, step back, and let the researchers get on with it.)
willis936 1mo ago
>People's jobs, the bubble, etc are societal level problems and well beyond what Anthropic could even hope to influence on their own. This is not true. There are two companies at the center of AI direction: Anthropic and OpenAI. If there were anyone on the plant who has the ability to influence our direction then it would be Dario Amodei. Acknowledging the grievances is a good step, but it's not enough. There needs to be a clear explanation of actions to address them, a plan to enact those actions, and commitments with consequences in failure of those actions. Tell people how you're going to make them more employable and effective and needed. Tell people how your datacenters will be carbon neutral. Tell people how financial actions resulting in a frothy market will be coming to an end. He and Sam Altman alone have this power and their inaction says everything we need to know about their intent.
- jacquesm 1mo ago
  > If there were anyone on the plant who has the ability to influence our direction then it would be Dario Amodei. Possibly, but not necessarily in a better direction. And that's the whole problem here. They should all go watch Phantasia.
- skybrian 1mo ago
  They're big, but they don't have that kind of power and people would be very suspicious if they tried to get in the position to have that kind of power. Hoping that they solve those huge problems themselves is basically hoping that they will have more power. It would be like expecting Craigslist to rescue journalism. The amount of power needed to disrupt an industry is nowhere near what's needed to fix it.
watwut 1mo ago
> People's jobs, the bubble, etc are societal level problems and well beyond what Anthropic could even hope to influence on their own. Anthropic is literally creating the bubble. It is not beyond their scope of influence, it is literally what they are consciously achieving. As for peoples jobs, same actually applies. Anthropic is selling itself on dream of replacing jobs, even or especially where they are well aware AI does not perform that well. They are actively trying to replace people quickly before management notices it does not work well. And also, they can influence how much their data centers contribute to global warming.
fyredge 1mo ago
Based on rhetoric from open ai and Anthropic, i don't think this is reasonable. If anything, their miracle of an AI should be able to solve the job market and economic bubbles. Deploy their agents on it, set up automated hedge funds, distribute the profits equitably to everyone on the planet and on and on. But something tells me either they can't or they won't, so no trust will be built.
smoe 1mo ago
I don't think the problem is that people don't believe AI can be beneficial. The problem is the perception that AI will affect people's lives more negatively than positively, while a few get even more obscenely rich and powerful. If you don't tackle the societal level problems, nobody will care about research breakthroughs.
- user43928 1mo ago
  I don't see a lot of societal level problems other than the labor market, for which both Anthropic and OpenAI create research, monitoring, and policy advice. I don't think anyone will care about the largely made up issues about electricity prices or water use in case AI literally cures cancer.
  - istypwbasofotso 1mo ago
    I don't see a lot of societal level problems other than the labor market His body was healthy, aside from the bullet in his skull.
  - joshheitzman 1mo ago
    "I don't see a lot of societal level problems other than the labor market" - that one problem is large enough to result in societal collapse.
  - nshshbr 29d ago
    How do you not see other societal level problems. This technology destroys human communication. It undermines the thing the internet came into existence for, and turns it into a liability. It grants intelligent analysis to a sprawling surveillance network. It makes people mentally ill. It destroys confidence and hope in technological progress. Who even cares about cancer at that point? I would rather die of cancer than live in a fake, ugly, artless world full of fake, stupid, and crazy people under constant surveillance by an AI.
pppppenguin 1mo ago
> Curing cancer sounds insane, but it's also a research problem, not a societal level coordination problem. Curing cancer is a societal problem. We have lots of cures for common diseases but resource allocation means people don't actually receive the treatment they need. For example, prohibitively expensive gene therapies, or HIV treatments in developing countries. A disease may have a "cure" but if people who need it don't receive it then from their perspective it may as well not exist.
mrhottakes 1mo ago
"Curing" cancer is actually a gigantic societal coordination problem.

by mindwok 1mo ago

disgruntledphd2 1mo ago

> Curing cancer sounds insane, but it's also a research problem, I just don't buy the AI labs approach to this stuff. Like, unless we can basically simulate the entirety of human biology, I don't really see how LLMs can make progress here. Maths is different as it doesn't require a real-world interface, and programming already (by definition) can be simulated on a computer. Without that, I can't see much (if any) progress being made on domains like biology.

XorNot 1mo ago
The real issue is that biology needs actual experiments done in the physical world, which isn't nice and orderly and well behaved and easily loadable onto a 19" rectangular box.
- bananaflag 1mo ago
  On the other hand, AI means actual experiments done in the physical world but coordinated by an entity that never sleeps and never gets depressed and can multiply itself manifold and always comes up with new ideas.
  - mohamedkoubaa 1mo ago
    That fanatical tireless entity will need access to human tissue.
    - airstrike 1mo ago
      Please don't give them ideas
      - mohamedkoubaa 1mo ago
        I assure you they already have these ideas
    - disgruntledphd2 1mo ago
      And hands.
- blitzar 1mo ago
  There is a lot of computational chemistry and biology done in the early stages of research - there are now multiple orders of magnitude of computation power available that is doing nothing but feeding forward on billions of random numbers.
mindwok 1mo ago
I'm a noob on this topic, but I think drug discovery is more amenable to this structurally than other problems. Simulating biology is what we were doing with protein folding before Alphafold, and the search space was far too large to find stuff in reasonable timeframes. Alphafold showed that you could take a physical process and make a neural net clever enough to learn just enough structure that it starts finding things we might care about, and still physically accurate, much faster. Drug discovery is similar AFAIK. The space of possibilities is even larger than protein folding, but it's structurally similar enough that I think AI will help to make progress on the discovery side. Actually getting the drug tested and approved is another matter though for sure.
- tsimionescu 1mo ago
  There are two relevant problems here, I think. For one, the question for Anthropic is whether LLMs, specifically, not AI techniques more generally, can help significantly with cancer research. And here, all experience so far is that LLMs only really work when they can easily automatically verify their own outputs and self correct - such as in math (using automatic proof verifiers) or programming (using compilers and unit tests). The second problem is that biological research speed is highly dependent on slow biological processes, such as cultures and long term studies. In programming, if an LLM could provide excellent insights and research suggestions 100x faster than a human, it would speed up the work roughly 100x. But in biology, it would only speed up the total work by a small amount - as any insight, even if absolutely brilliant and spot on, would still require months and years of actual experimentation.
  - epihelix 1mo ago
    For drug discovery, you can simulate interactions in silico, driven in an agentic loop via LLM. Mostly stil using non-LLM tools, of course, but it saves time. If I was Dario, and I was after a cynical sales grab to go with the "actually curing cancer!" spiel, I'd probably aim for a drug repurposing strategy. I'd use the above approach to find existing drugs that might target known pathways that drive incurable cancers. I'd only screen compounds with extensive safety data and easy delivery mechanisms, and from the in silico hits, I'd throw a tonne of money at rapidly experimentally screening all those candidates in parallel, and then rapidly push those that worked into clinical trials. I'd assume that, with a small but non-negligible prior, and the money to push through hundreds and hundreds of candidate compounds through at once, I'd have a reasonable chance of getting one drug through to a "Claude Cured Cancer!" show-stopper headline. But I think even then, with all of Anthropic's wealth, you'd need 2 years minimum to move from initial screening targets to a Phase 3 trial. And it would be an almost criminal waste of research funding to get there -- the dollars for discoveries ratio would be appallingly bad. (If I was Dario, and I actually wanted to cure some forms of cancer? I'd just use my obscene profits to fund actual cancer research, step back, and let the researchers get on with it.)

willis936 1mo ago

>People's jobs, the bubble, etc are societal level problems and well beyond what Anthropic could even hope to influence on their own. This is not true. There are two companies at the center of AI direction: Anthropic and OpenAI. If there were anyone on the plant who has the ability to influence our direction then it would be Dario Amodei. Acknowledging the grievances is a good step, but it's not enough. There needs to be a clear explanation of actions to address them, a plan to enact those actions, and commitments with consequences in failure of those actions. Tell people how you're going to make them more employable and effective and needed. Tell people how your datacenters will be carbon neutral. Tell people how financial actions resulting in a frothy market will be coming to an end. He and Sam Altman alone have this power and their inaction says everything we need to know about their intent.

jacquesm 1mo ago
> If there were anyone on the plant who has the ability to influence our direction then it would be Dario Amodei. Possibly, but not necessarily in a better direction. And that's the whole problem here. They should all go watch Phantasia.
skybrian 1mo ago
They're big, but they don't have that kind of power and people would be very suspicious if they tried to get in the position to have that kind of power. Hoping that they solve those huge problems themselves is basically hoping that they will have more power. It would be like expecting Craigslist to rescue journalism. The amount of power needed to disrupt an industry is nowhere near what's needed to fix it.

watwut 1mo ago

> People's jobs, the bubble, etc are societal level problems and well beyond what Anthropic could even hope to influence on their own. Anthropic is literally creating the bubble. It is not beyond their scope of influence, it is literally what they are consciously achieving. As for peoples jobs, same actually applies. Anthropic is selling itself on dream of replacing jobs, even or especially where they are well aware AI does not perform that well. They are actively trying to replace people quickly before management notices it does not work well. And also, they can influence how much their data centers contribute to global warming.

fyredge 1mo ago

Based on rhetoric from open ai and Anthropic, i don't think this is reasonable. If anything, their miracle of an AI should be able to solve the job market and economic bubbles. Deploy their agents on it, set up automated hedge funds, distribute the profits equitably to everyone on the planet and on and on. But something tells me either they can't or they won't, so no trust will be built.

smoe 1mo ago

I don't think the problem is that people don't believe AI can be beneficial. The problem is the perception that AI will affect people's lives more negatively than positively, while a few get even more obscenely rich and powerful. If you don't tackle the societal level problems, nobody will care about research breakthroughs.

user43928 1mo ago
I don't see a lot of societal level problems other than the labor market, for which both Anthropic and OpenAI create research, monitoring, and policy advice. I don't think anyone will care about the largely made up issues about electricity prices or water use in case AI literally cures cancer.
- istypwbasofotso 1mo ago
  I don't see a lot of societal level problems other than the labor market His body was healthy, aside from the bullet in his skull.
- joshheitzman 1mo ago
  "I don't see a lot of societal level problems other than the labor market" - that one problem is large enough to result in societal collapse.
- nshshbr 29d ago
  How do you not see other societal level problems. This technology destroys human communication. It undermines the thing the internet came into existence for, and turns it into a liability. It grants intelligent analysis to a sprawling surveillance network. It makes people mentally ill. It destroys confidence and hope in technological progress. Who even cares about cancer at that point? I would rather die of cancer than live in a fake, ugly, artless world full of fake, stupid, and crazy people under constant surveillance by an AI.

pppppenguin 1mo ago

> Curing cancer sounds insane, but it's also a research problem, not a societal level coordination problem. Curing cancer is a societal problem. We have lots of cures for common diseases but resource allocation means people don't actually receive the treatment they need. For example, prohibitively expensive gene therapies, or HIV treatments in developing countries. A disease may have a "cure" but if people who need it don't receive it then from their perspective it may as well not exist.

mrhottakes 1mo ago

"Curing" cancer is actually a gigantic societal coordination problem.