Nobel Cause
Google are shutting down AlphaFold. This is interesting for a couple of reasons. AlphaFold is/was a machine learning tool, obviously presented as Artificial Intelligence, that is supposed to assist with calculating protein folding. The main use case for this we were told is curing cancer, although Google were careful not to say this directly. They did however talk up AlphaFold alongside the idea of curing cancer regularly. The implication was certainly obvious, and so was the motivation.
Often if one voices an opinion along the lines that AI is mostly garbage, the chances that a crypto AI bro will tell you how it is super-beneficial in the health industry and if you’re against AI then you obviously don’t want to save people’s lives and don’t care about health. A stupid but regularly deployed non-argument.
The guys behind AlphaFold who are/were Google employees, even landed a Nobel prize for it, because as we all know, Nobel prizes are now routinely given out to people who either do not do the thing they got the prize for (e.g. Barack Obomba), and especially when it comes to technology it doesn’t even need to work.
So, even though Google have used AlphaFold and how it will cure cancer as PR and marketing for their insane AI buildout, and even though they wangled a Nobel Prize out of it, none of that is now worth them keeping AlphaFold going. The staff are being transferred to other departments (AKA feeding the chatbot) or have left the company.
When you hear the next dumbfuck AI bro tell you how all this insane spending on near-useless shite is going to cure cancer and other diseases, ask them why Google shut down AlphaFold then? You’ll be able to watch the single braincell melt in real time.