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Comment by tjchear | Hacker News Reader

I'm not an expert in ML/Biology, but I wonder if doing so won't completely eliminate all of humankind's diseases, but shift the battle from one between humans and bacteria/viruses, to one where ML takes the place of humans by proxy (say we let this ML vs superbugs play out over centuries). I wonder to what direction evolutionary pressure in the face of ML would take bacteria.

Perhaps a super smart bug.

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Molecular biology is not that easy. Selecting a promising molecule is only a small fraction of the work. If you know the molecule you still have to be able to replicate and bring it to the place where it is required. So even if AI can support the process still a lot of plain old biochemistry is needed. AI is just one of many tools. And as you can read in the article a lot of trials are required by the regulatory authorities before the drug can be applied to humans.

True but it's interesting that once you have an oracle that given a molecule provides you with an antibiotic score, you can show it directly molecules that are easy to produce and or likely safe for humans. This should help significantly.

It will not go without replication, trials and production, regardless what oracle you have. And keep in mind that the oracle has a quite significant error rate. You won't get an immediate solution, just proposals. And whether or how a drug works is also dependent on the environment and there are dynamic aspects and complex processes within a cell extending over space and time. It's much more complex than speech recognition or self-driving cars.

We speak in hypotheticals of course, but barring any physics defying barriers here, one can imagine a future where those issues you raised have been addressed (e.g improved simulation/ML techniques, less red tape, faster trials, greater accessibility to treatment). Even now, I think mankind's immune defense is no longer confined to itself, but must be thought of as a bigger system that extends to the pharmaceutical industrial complex. Any sufficiently ambitious bacteria is basically taking on not just us, but also the collective work of all researchers diligently working on the next super bug killer.

You are invited to try it. You will not be able to avoid the laws of nature, and there will also be many legal hurdles. But if you make a big step forward, you will undoubtedly be a Nobel Prize candidate.

Thats a very interesting thought. I am not sure evolution can compete with artificial evolution ( ML ). But we never know :). Fingers crossed that ML can always beat evolution.

That's also a very interesting thought. The general narrative with general AI is that natural evolution in humans is too slow, we won't be able to catch up mentally with such an AI and this is a bad thing. But the flip side is that natural evolution that is damaging to us (bacteria and viruses) also won't be able to evolve fast enough.

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