This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
It’s kind of a marvel that we all have the bulk of human knowledge at our fingertips, and instead of noble pursuits we largely use it for social manipulation and power grabs.
I guess there is just more population control in misinformation than there is in curing disease.
always has been like that
Funny, one of the first arguments I had about AI was with someone who insisted it would be incredibly helpful at predicting protein folds.
That person was right: https://medicine.iu.edu/blogs/research-updates/the-protein-folding-problem-the-day-ai-unlocked-a-secret-of-life
So this may be why Google is closing AlphaFold; AI is already doing it.
To be clear, I wasn't necessarily disagreeing about AI's utility, just about how protein fold AI isn't the same as LLM AI; we've used computer models for predictions of protein structure and genetic mutation severity for a while, though they have always been taken with a grain of salt that I fear is no longer being done - a prediction is still a prediction, after all. Doctors were already incorrectly confusing computer model predictions of genetic mutation severity for positive test results back when I was working as a genetic counselor in the 2010's - my concern is that the widespread trust of "AI" is only going to exacerbate that.
I'm a bit confused, though. The AI doing it was AlphaFold, which is shutting down. Shouldn't your statement be AI was already doing it? Gemini is an LLM - not the same type of thing as AlphaFold, despite the fact that they're both called "AI," which was the cause of my original argument. The AI that was doing the protein fold prediction is being replaced with an "AI" that can't. It looks like there's still RoseTTAFold, but losing the frontrunner is still not great when it's shutting down to focus more on LLM's.
So they want the chat bot that lies instead of the science machine that cures cancers.
Wouldn't expect any less from the company that removed "Dont be evil" from its company charter.
I should have seen this coming, even then, I am extremely sad.
This was of the few uses for machine learning that I think it was genuily useful. Mature enough to make an impact without destroying the enviroment.
It was also my main argument for people that are full hate AI. Now gone.
I hope others companies continue this research. It's in this type of problems where machine learning truly shines.
GenAi is still not mature enough, throwing so much compute power at it, is mostly wasting resources.
Imagine what could be done if all the computer power and researchers wasted on chats went to this type of project.
A tragedy has befallen humanity.
We've created the great filter that explains the Fermi paradox.
I kid you not, yesterday while reading about the ai bubble and the datacenters boom i was thinking maybe this is THE filter.
Not a nuclear winter, not the angry alien or the big scary asteroid. Just a fucking chatbot wasting all the water and power. We truly live in a boring dystopia.
*arsehole tech bros have created
Jumper announced in June that he was leaving DeepMind to join Anthropic.
Key people were leaving.
Other former staff members were reassigned to Alphabet's drug-discovery company Isomorphic Labs, which is a DeepMind spin-off.
It's not as bad as the headline makes it sound.
So the actually useful product gets shit down for the useless product
Useful for humans. Not for robots and reptiles.
amazing work
it's crazy. some of this went from taking years to now taking minutes and people react negative because it's using machine learning and AI.
Thank you Google.
This is fundamentally different than chat bots and the anti-AI movement needs to learn this to be effective.
don't blame the anti-AI movement for conflating when it was places like Google that purposely marketed LLMs as AI.
ofc people will confuse the two and just say "fuck all AI".
Absolutely true. Tech companies and others love to conflate them. It's also a money thing: Idiots with too much money (that we should probably tax to use for something useful) want to invest in AI, so if I've been working on a project that needs funds, I just rebrand it as "AI", even if it just runs on more traditional ML principles.
So I finally let my Android Auto update from Google Assistant to Gemini, which it's been wanting for months.
First thing I did was prompt it to play a specific artist, just like I do at least once a week since it forces me to use the voice activation instead of the on screen keyboard, even when there are passengers that can type. It responded saying it is not capable of playing music at all. Wtf.
So I then rephrase and tell it to play the artist on YouTube Music... And it does so, but doesn't get the artist even close to correct. I had to prompt it 5 times with varying emphasis to get it to finally get it right.
So literally the first thing it did wa like to me... and then it worked correctly less than 20% of the time... So much better than the Assistant it replaced that never gave me a problem. Totally better.
My car with Google assistant interrupted my conversation with my girlfriend yesterday and started giving me a haiku very loud for no reason.
At least it made us laugh. But technology is ridiculous right now. So much shit we don't want or need.
Even more scarier: it’s listening when you don’t know or want to
It has to do that to know when you say a keyword like "hey Google". I just wonder what other keywords it's listening to and using to serve ads or profile me as a user.
At least all the things NSA and CIA are interested at the time...
All new things always have an intelligence aspect to it:
We have seen the step by step dance into dystopia for decades now. Tech is only improving our society as a side effect of monitoring people or charging more money from people.
I remember using Google Now on my Galaxy Nexus a lot and actually finding it useful. Then Google pushed for Assistant and it was a dumpster fire. Glad to see that big G is still up to the same shenanigans.
Same thing with swapping to Gemini on the phone. First thing and only thing I asked for was to set a reminder alarm. But Gemini couldn't talk to the clock app and refused. In the trash it went.
alphafold isn't sunsetting, they are dismantling the original research team. its still active and being worked on
The cost in preventable deaths, had we been continuing protein research instead of pouring the world’s resources into a fancy autocorrect, is incalculable.
But you need to understand, preventing deaths doesn't make Google any money. Please think about the poor corporation!
I think this is a miscalculation on Google's part because dead people can't buy their products.
People don’t buy products anymore. They’re too poor to care about. Businesses sell to governments and other businesses now and couldn’t care less what you want or think.
Honestly they could’ve pointed AI at this problem to try and rack up at least some positive AI press coverage
But... Alpha fold is AI.
Google. The graveyard of projects.
They are killing Google earth desktop application.
I installed Google Earth on every machine (thanks ninite) since it came out and think I only opened it a few times during the first year to show it to people lol
Pls tell me this won't affect google earth VR on steam. It's amazing!
Holy shit, that is so fucking stupid. This has so much potential. This is such an anti-human pattern.
In 2011 Google surreptitiously edited, "don't be evil", from its mission statement. Voila!
