It's clear Dario believes that the solution to AI's PR problem is to cure cancer. Or invent other revolutionary medical treatments. They're going to heavily promote every step along the way no matter how small or far away from commercialization they are, like this one.
No doubt that curing cancer would help, but I think the timeline might be a little too long. Even RSI AGI will not be able to get new medical treatments to market instantly. Real world testing takes a long time and is an unavoidable part of the process.
> Even RSI will not be able to get new medical treatments to market instantly. Real world testing takes a long time and is an unavoidable part of the process.
Cancer can be cured in a lot of cases, its just so damn expensive and the treatment is beyond torturous that some patients cannot handle it. Stem cells are amazing. But we need cheaper technology to replicate them into the cancer destroyers they need to be, as well as find ways to ease the pain of that internal battle.
Please tell me more about these “cures” you speak of. Because to my knowledge, yes we are good at getting patients into remission, we do not have “cures”
Coupled with the fact that treatment is often life altering in and of itself
Dario would like to ‘cure’ aging. He’s got some personal experience with bad illnesses, but aging isn’t that. I also have reduced trust for people who want to live forever and don’t have kids.
>> the solution to AI's PR problem is to cure cancer
I think its much simpler than that.
Anything actually useful for people would be a good solution.
Obviously image gen and code gen is not the case, as though it does increase productivity, it doesn't make anyone's life actually better. If it led to 4 day work week - sure. Otherwise it could easily be net negative.
This is great, but I can't help but wonder if we're going to have another post next week with a lab complaining that they were about to publish this same finding, and they had Claude proofread their paper, and whoops how'd that get into Anthropic's training data?
I am going to assume that life science researchers are less egotistic and less prone to anti-tech hysteria (i.e., more exposed/accustomed to the benefits of tech) unlike mathematicians who thought pen and paper was all they needed because their incredible 2-3 SD IQs was all the processing they needed and any evidence of a stochastic parrot pattern-matching aggressively faster than they could was simply cheating.
I wonder how long it will take for the damage Alpöge and Buckmaster have done to the perception of these AI-driven scientific developments to fade.
Not saying that they were right or wrong, but that single moment sullied all AI-driven breakthroughs that came after it, and I don't think it was ever particularly relevant, at least not nearly to the degree that it was presented in the media. But I guess it ended up being a convenient outlet for AI anxiety in the end.
If your core service is getting more expensive to provide and competitors are busy eating your margins, why let someone else taste your secret sauce and only get paid for the tokens, when you can keep the good stuff (bio capability) for yourself, and net both the profit and the fame?
Because their core product is not a long-term sustainable business strategy. Local hardware and models will continue to improve to the point of not needing the hosted solutions. And if you do need a hosted solution, remember that the big cloud providers already offer these solutions, so signing up for OpenAI/Anthropic _and_ AWS/GCP/Azure is not a sound business decision compared to just signing up with 1 of them that offers your cloud infra + GenAI infra. (Which is why the long-term benefits for cloud companies will probably be for the likes of AWS and not the likes of OpenAI).
They'll continue to burn model for marginal model improvements in the next few years all the while having no moat _and_ having Open-Weight / Local models eat their lunch.
The only way for them to stay relevant as a company is to expand beyond simply providing the models.
Very cool! However, the amazing absence of results makes me question whether they've got a Nature letter forthcoming or whether they know that another AI lab has a similar finding...
This shows why biology is so much harder a problem area for LLMs than math, finding RTs is tedious but pretty doable today, they had to scope the problem down a lot from something that would be the equivalent of Navier Stokes in biology. Glad they’re doing it though, even if it’s just marketing.
Aren't there unlimited mechanisms like this? Isn't this why Doudna isn't a billionaire (you can patent something, but it's easy to create another one and patent it separately)?
The singularity, as defined by Hinton (and others) as RSI (Recursive Self Improvement) may actually be beginning already, as OpenAI has announced an AI acting as a "research intern" (!).
It's clear Dario believes that the solution to AI's PR problem is to cure cancer. Or invent other revolutionary medical treatments. They're going to heavily promote every step along the way no matter how small or far away from commercialization they are, like this one.
No doubt that curing cancer would help, but I think the timeline might be a little too long. Even RSI AGI will not be able to get new medical treatments to market instantly. Real world testing takes a long time and is an unavoidable part of the process.
> Even RSI will not be able to get new medical treatments to market instantly. Real world testing takes a long time and is an unavoidable part of the process.
Is it unavoidable, though?
In the way that breathing is unavoidable. Like yeah technically there is a way to avoid doing it, but not a way that you want to seriously consider.
Cancer can be cured in a lot of cases, its just so damn expensive and the treatment is beyond torturous that some patients cannot handle it. Stem cells are amazing. But we need cheaper technology to replicate them into the cancer destroyers they need to be, as well as find ways to ease the pain of that internal battle.
Please tell me more about these “cures” you speak of. Because to my knowledge, yes we are good at getting patients into remission, we do not have “cures” Coupled with the fact that treatment is often life altering in and of itself
CAR T-cell therapies
https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/treatment/research/car-t...
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/may/10/cancer-treat...
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
> Real world testing takes a long time and is an unavoidable part of the process.
Not if it's a virus
Dario would like to ‘cure’ aging. He’s got some personal experience with bad illnesses, but aging isn’t that. I also have reduced trust for people who want to live forever and don’t have kids.
>> the solution to AI's PR problem is to cure cancer
I think its much simpler than that. Anything actually useful for people would be a good solution.
Obviously image gen and code gen is not the case, as though it does increase productivity, it doesn't make anyone's life actually better. If it led to 4 day work week - sure. Otherwise it could easily be net negative.
I think this approach of actually doing useful science is better PR than hiring an army of influencers to shill for you, OpenAI style.
Generally speaking, hiring an army of influencers to shill for you results in bad PR, and comments like this one.
This is great, but I can't help but wonder if we're going to have another post next week with a lab complaining that they were about to publish this same finding, and they had Claude proofread their paper, and whoops how'd that get into Anthropic's training data?
Lots of stuff gets discovered by AI bots that was always hidden in plain sight. They're remarkably good at "connecting the dots".
I am going to assume that life science researchers are less egotistic and less prone to anti-tech hysteria (i.e., more exposed/accustomed to the benefits of tech) unlike mathematicians who thought pen and paper was all they needed because their incredible 2-3 SD IQs was all the processing they needed and any evidence of a stochastic parrot pattern-matching aggressively faster than they could was simply cheating.
the article says the reverse transcriptase had been noticed before, but apparently only Claude commented on the subsequence repeating, to your point.
This is a very inaccurate manipulation of facts that fundamentally represents everything that mathematicians wrote.
Shouldnt this be "misrepresents"?
I wonder how long it will take for the damage Alpöge and Buckmaster have done to the perception of these AI-driven scientific developments to fade.
Not saying that they were right or wrong, but that single moment sullied all AI-driven breakthroughs that came after it, and I don't think it was ever particularly relevant, at least not nearly to the degree that it was presented in the media. But I guess it ended up being a convenient outlet for AI anxiety in the end.
I’m confused why AI companies are using agents in-house for this type of research instead of partnering externally.
I guess the improvement loop is tighter and they have more control over how discoveries can be used for marketing?
But, in my mind, it begins to feel like they are setting themselves up to be “everything” companies instead of focusing on their core product…
Because the goal is marketing and maxxing the IPO, not real-world results.
If your core service is getting more expensive to provide and competitors are busy eating your margins, why let someone else taste your secret sauce and only get paid for the tokens, when you can keep the good stuff (bio capability) for yourself, and net both the profit and the fame?
If an amazing drug or other therapeutic falls out of this I bet they would be happy to own it outright.
Because their core product is not a long-term sustainable business strategy. Local hardware and models will continue to improve to the point of not needing the hosted solutions. And if you do need a hosted solution, remember that the big cloud providers already offer these solutions, so signing up for OpenAI/Anthropic _and_ AWS/GCP/Azure is not a sound business decision compared to just signing up with 1 of them that offers your cloud infra + GenAI infra. (Which is why the long-term benefits for cloud companies will probably be for the likes of AWS and not the likes of OpenAI).
They'll continue to burn model for marginal model improvements in the next few years all the while having no moat _and_ having Open-Weight / Local models eat their lunch.
The only way for them to stay relevant as a company is to expand beyond simply providing the models.
Very cool! However, the amazing absence of results makes me question whether they've got a Nature letter forthcoming or whether they know that another AI lab has a similar finding...
This shows why biology is so much harder a problem area for LLMs than math, finding RTs is tedious but pretty doable today, they had to scope the problem down a lot from something that would be the equivalent of Navier Stokes in biology. Glad they’re doing it though, even if it’s just marketing.
"Investigating the novel enzyme incident in our SF lab [2027]"
LLMs are really good at discovering patterns on huge dataset. Google also had similair breakthrough discoveries they stopped marketing them
Hurray! Vibe coded enzymes!
But also, vibe coded pathogens. Boo!
Aren't there unlimited mechanisms like this? Isn't this why Doudna isn't a billionaire (you can patent something, but it's easy to create another one and patent it separately)?
In a year or two, articles like this will either be artifacts from peak hype or evidence of the beginning of the singularity. Right?
Yes. I would bet on the latter.
That's black and white thinking; it will be a midgularity - so neither.
Mehgularity
Whompageddon
The singularity, as defined by Hinton (and others) as RSI (Recursive Self Improvement) may actually be beginning already, as OpenAI has announced an AI acting as a "research intern" (!).
How is it improving, that would require rearranging its weights and biases which it cannot do easily or quickly.
Is easily and quickly a requirement? Isn't it enough that over time it improves itself even if the process is complex and slow?
Don't use it for biology, Dario said, as he turned humans into Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.. I reckon that soon, he too will return to dimension X.