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Not impressed
Earlier this week, Google-owned artificial intelligence development firm DeepMind announced with great fanfare that it has built an algorithm that can predict how proteins will fold based on their molecular makeup.
If that holds up, it’s an astonishing achievement that has eluded scientists for decades. But Business intern reports that many experts in the field are unimpressed, instead calling out the hype from DeepMind.
Play games
While critical scientists do not discount the importance of making DeepMind, they wonder if AlphaFold 2 will actually provide a useful tool for researchers as DeepMind claims.
DeepMinds’ AlphaFold 2 algorithm scored higher in the Critical Assessment of Structure Prediction (CASP) competition, which tests potential solutions to the protein folding problem, than any other team in history.
It can be a weakness. Scientists in the field, WITH A reports, suggest that AlphaFold 2 was optimized specifically for CASP as if it earned the highest score in a video game.
“We can’t really be sure how well AlphaFold works in the face of the much richer and more diverse range of proteins found in the real world of living organisms,” said Max Little, a computer scientist at the University of Birmingham. WITH A.
Frankly, the hype serves no one. DeepMind can now never keep the promise that was made and got experimenters in the mud in the process. Plus, until DeepMind shares their code, no one in the field cares and they’re just the ones patting each other on the back.
– Mike Thompson (@mctucsf) December 1, 2020
The first step
However, CASP President John Moult championed the work of DeepMind and fought off the idea that competition does not provide real world use.
“CASP is not a game, it is a science experiment designed to test folding methods in close to real situations,” said Moult WITH A. “What is missing?”
“Fifty years of listening to false statements about this problem have made me the biggest skeptic in the world,” Moult added. “But I have looked at these results very carefully… Obviously, this is only the beginning of what DeepMind and others will achieve with these kinds of approaches.”
READ MORE: DeepMind’s breakthrough in protein folding sparks a fierce debate among skeptical scientists: ‘Until they share their code, no one on the ground cares’ [Business Insider]
Learn more about AlphaFold: Google solves long-standing, near-impossible biology problem
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