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orthogonal_cube • yesterday at 10:10 PM • 4 replies • view on HN

This is one application of AI that I’ve been hopeful for. Accelerating research into new medicines and cures to disorders, diseases, and cancers could be a net positive on human lives. Maybe it’ll help bring R&D costs down so that medicines for rare diseases aren’t out of reach for those that are afflicted by them.

> If Claude is to significantly increase the rate of new cures, we need to work with many more biotechnology firms and integrate Claude more deeply into their development processes.

Given all that, the wording here feels very self-serving. Cautious optimism is probably warranted.


Replies

jrowen • yesterday at 11:29 PM

It's true though. It's not like math or software where you can do it isolation and work things out logically "on paper." I don't think the solution will be "put a bunch of agents on it and let them figure it out." The tools to model and observe what's going on in full detail don't exist. Far from it. You can't really optimize the trial and error feedback loop time.

I think it will look more like Claude just helping every expert along the way do their job better. Analyzing and synthesizing data to make better experimental suggestions and design new equipment (or totally new experiments based on unconceived-of apparatuses?). Managing the flow of information and building bespoke knowledge bases and tools. The more it is integrated into all the systems and researchers involved the faster it can put things together.

Although, on second thought, maybe there even is a near future where it takes our models and understanding and just galaxybrains a better model. Has anyone tried feeding it some collection of datasets and saying "can you make a more detailed model of a cell?"

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mlboss • yesterday at 11:18 PM

Drug discovery is extremely regulated process and for the right reasons. It would be the last frontiers to conquer with AI.

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lukan • yesterday at 10:41 PM

Of course it is self serving. I am optimistic for progress in medicine with the help of AI in general as well, not optimistic for antrophic.

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talon8635 • yesterday at 10:43 PM

This is basically the one thing everyone agrees on with AI, and seemingly the only thing not being “disrupted”

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