The usefulness of alphafold had been grossly overstated by science media. The structures it generates are mostly nonsense, they typically can't generate molecular dynamics simulation trajectories with the correct physical properties, which makes them not useful for drug discovery. in computational biology today you'll most often find them in use as a starting point for structure refinement or as one of many sources of data for some integrative method. Again, not useless, and an improvement over previous structure prediction algorithms, but they didn't 'solve protein folding' or anything, like Google might have you believe. I don't put much stock in Nobel prizes, I mean, they gave one to Henry Kissinger.

Google also released alphafold 3 under a strict non commercial license, which severely limited its usefulness for both commercial and academic work, the latter of which all but requires using more permissive licenses. I assume Google wanted to monetize a commercial version of it at some point.

I've been using Openfold 3 in some work I've been doing recently, and while the software is a bit undercooked, it does produce structures similar to alphafold 3 without any of Google's bullshit. So I wouldn't worry too much about this announcement. The protein folding will continue with or without them

they seriously out here shutting down the one universally accepted good this shitshow has brought us?

ffs man

really making it hard for the common person to not fucking hate their guts, between shit like this, data center pollution and the growing mental health crisis of people with cyberpsychosis getting talked into suicide by the llm

edit: shit i got jebaited by the title i think... the project is still available as is but the scientists have been moved to other projects yes?

Sounds like they just moved the research over to isomorphic labs, also even from the onset people quickly took the original approach and paper and made their own versions tuned for their needs.

Feels more like a research project having achieved its goals, the key players moved on, and they're closing the Deepmind part of it as it's not really useful anymore.

The next big thing in AI is "if LLMs reach sentience and AGI status, they'll be doing even more great things".

delusional dimwits dreaming dollar signs

~~Don't~~ be [maximally] evil.

So instead of continuing a project that could cure diseases and help understand human biology they'll focus on a system I use for asking questions like "What adhesive is best to attaching siding trim?"

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.

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.

Funny, one of the first arguments I had about AI was with someone who insisted it would be incredibly helpful at predicting protein folds.

Engadget changed the click bait title.

Google is not shutting down alphafold.

So the actually useful product gets shit down for the useless product

Where is the problem? With imprisonments in AI it's just a legacy system

A tragedy has befallen humanity.

The cost in preventable deaths, had we been continuing protein research instead of pouring the world’s resources into a fancy autocorrect, is incalculable.

Google. The graveyard of projects.

alphafold isn't sunsetting, they are dismantling the original research team. its still active and being worked on

Holy shit, that is so fucking stupid. This has so much potential. This is such an anti-human pattern.

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.

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.