Under a discussion of DeepMind’s new WeatherNext forecasting model, this exchange astonished me:
A 2 hours ago | prev | next [–]
And this is why GDM has to go. It's crazy that when Google is struggling so
badly that efforts like this that have no path to revenue at all were funded.
GDM management really thought that they were some kind of charity. UNREAL.
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B 1 hour ago | parent | next [–]
Are you being sarcastic? Even if “Google is struggling so badly” (which it
really is not - the narrative will flip again at some point), these efforts
will have a lasting impact on the world. Not everything good is about
bringing in revenue.
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C 39 minutes ago | root | parent | next [–]
shareholders are pretty unhappy about demis. think about alphafold. huge
investments from the company, tens of billions. at a critical time. and
absolutely 0 revenue. it got demis a nobel though. as a shareholder
you'd be unhappy too.
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C 41 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [–]
i feel you. as a google shareholder i am disappointed too.
replyThink about the achievement being dismissed here: Google DeepMind produced a machine learning model that was able to solve protein folding problems, one of the most important problems in modern science, the solving of which will be benefiting people the world over for decades or even longer. An achievement so great multiple people on the project were awarded Nobel prizes before they were in their fifties, because scientists immediately understood how monumental the achievement was and the impact it would have.
I guess A and C above think Hassabis worked on AlphaFold only because he wanted a Nobel prize. Maybe that was part of his motivation, what scientist wouldn’t love to get a Nobel one day, but I believe Hassabis probably did it more for science than for personal glory. He would have known that the achievement would bring that anyway. Scientists believe that advancing human knowledge and understanding is a higher cause that scientists often consider its own reward. As most scientists know all too well, science doesn’t always pay very much. But they do it anyway because they believe in science’s benefit to humanity.
Shareholders like A and C don’t believe in that. All the science humanity has ever done, all the discoveries, mean nothing to them but for their ability to generate returns. They would sell humanity if it made them a buck. Maybe that’s why C believes Hassabis only worked on AlphaFold for personal gain: that’s the only motivation C believes in.
In 1922 Apsley Cherry-Garrard, in his memoir of Captain Scott’s tragic 1910-1913 Terra Nova Expedition to Antarctica, wrote of this same belief weighing on science back then too:
And I believe that in a vague intangible way there was an ideal in front of and behind this work. It is really not desirable for men who do not believe that knowledge is of value for its own sake to take up this kind of life. The question constantly put to us in civilization was and still is: “What is the use? Is there gold? or Is there coal?” The commercial spirit of the present day can see no good in pure science: the English manufacturer is not interested in research which will not give him a financial return within one year: the city man sees in it only so much energy wasted on unproductive work: truly they are bound to the wheel of conventional life.
Cherry might have been writing about A and C today.
With the news that Hassabis is leaving Google DeepMind to become Google’s chief scientist there’s anxiety about DeepMind’s future. I hope they’re able to keep working on science for its own sake. The world is better for it when scientists aren’t so bound the wheel of a conventional life.
P.S. Cherry-Gerrard’s book, The Worst Journey in the World, is amazing. Considered one of the best travel-adventure books ever written, it tells of how he and two companions, who would later die with Scott on their return from the pole, risk their lives a hundred times a day for six weeks on the first ever winter journey in Antarctica seeking scientific knowledge ultimately proved futile. It asks deep questions about science, life, and meaning, and leaves the answers up to you. It’s well worth the read if you haven’t already.