travelling and mathing, some AI
Pale Blue Dot
Joined January 2008
- Tweets14.9K
- Following3.3K
- Followers1.1K
- Likes86.3K
Keiran retweeted
Experts say you should wait 60-90 minutes after waking up before drinking coffee.
But here’s the thing.
No.
A little dose of reality
There’s a really pronounced divide between people who are on the AI side of things and people who are on the biology side of things. Even among people working in AI, the divide persists based on where they’re focused.
The AI side, adherents of scaling laws and the bitter lesson, believe that AI getting better means AI being more capable of novel discoveries in medicine (that go beyond discovering new drugs in well understood targets or speeding up dry lab work etc).
The biology people think the idea of a bitter lesson in biology is kind of ridiculous and that regardless of AI’s capabilities it’s going to be at least 5-10 years until you could hope to reliably simulate human toxicology in silico (right now AI/ML can’t even reliably simulate in vivo studies like binding affinities or functional assays).
Even the most AI pilled of them, who will list all the areas that AI can reduce the time spent on various areas, don’t think the concept of AI discovering novel targets or generating new understanding of causal biology is realistic in the near term. Most, in fact, will readily characterize the assumption that even an “ASI” level model could find cures hidden in our current understanding (without expanding that understanding with significantly more biological data) as patently false.
This was a big part of why we wanted to experience it ourselves by using AI for a (very) small portion of what it can do in biology. It was both mind blowing and revealed some poignant insights into how different the problem of making AI better at something like coding is to the problems of biology.
Even if it unlocked the ability to generate new molecules at a stunning pace, its simulation (in silico) of binding only had 49% accuracy. And if we wanted to improve that, we’d need to feed it back the data from the lab - data that took about 30x as long to get as it took to generate the molecules. And these were tests in a test tube (turn of phrase), imagine how long it would take if we wanted to improve the model with data that required recruiting humans and monitoring their reactions.
Human biology is very complex, and adding a drug - especially a novel drug and doubly so for a novel drug acting on a novel mechanism - means mapping interactions that have nth-order-effects that we don’t have the data to predict. Virtual cells have made advancements enabled by AI, but the perturbations equate to a small fraction of the possible.
This is before you even get into curing disease, especially uniquely human diseases. Brain function involves cellular identities that are unique to humans, meaning animal studies are of little use.
How long does it take to understand what the side effects of chronic administration of a drug in humans are? AI can speed up analyzing the data, or designing the trial or even getting it approved…but it can’t make a 6 month trial complete in 3 months.
I think its important to point out that significant advancements can be made in AI that contribute to biology, while also being realistic about how much it speeds up something as complex as curing a specific cancer or diseases of the brain.
Keiran retweeted
My doctor has been telling me for years that Diet Coke is bad for you. Finally told him “bet.” Did blood panels, then 3 months of no diet soda, than a new set of blood panels. Can confirm Diet Coke is not good for you.
Keiran retweeted
The Israeli Foreign Ministry is lying.
No coordination was required, and we were never told that it was. We were not in a restricted security area. We did not pass any checkpoints.
Palestinian farmers do not — and should not — need permits to harvest their own olive fields. But they fear doing so, because the IDF doesn’t protect them from settler violence.
We’re trying to model solidarity & co-existence between Jews and Palestinians, and to call attention to the horrors of the occupation. The Israeli government is trying to foment violence between Jews and Palestinians, and to make it impossible for Palestinians to harvest their olive groves, drive on their roads, or live in their homes.
This was not about harvesting olives.
It was about harvesting headlines.
Brad Lander’s latest stunt is nothing more than a calculated political provocation.
Lander traveled to a foreign country, deliberately entered a restricted security area, and participated in an unauthorized activity without the required coordination.
What makes this stunt even more outrageous is that his own team contacted Israeli representatives in the United States ahead of his visit and was explicitly informed that proper coordination with the relevant authorities was required.
He chose to ignore those instructions.
At a time of heightened security tensions, Israeli security forces have a responsibility to protect lives, prevent dangerous incidents, and maintain public order.
Had anyone been injured as a result of his reckless political theater, Lander would undoubtedly have been among the first to demand that Israeli authorities intervene and provide protection.
Brad Lander came looking for a confrontation. Now he is pretending to be its victim.
Keiran retweeted
💢 "I don't know how a parent can raise such monsters," American photojournalist Heidi Levine said from her hospital bed in Ramallah after masked Israeli settlers beat her in the West Bank on Friday.
"They are Jewish terrorists," the Washington Post freelancer said. She
was attacked while covering the olive harvest in Abu Falah. Levine said the settlers pushed her to the ground and kicked her "probably 50 times" over about 10 minutes, tearing her cameras and phone off her. She said her flak jacket and helmet likely saved her life before Palestinian colleagues and medics evacuated her by ambulance.
"Sadly, none of them will be prosecuted," she said. "I am sure of it."
Keiran retweeted
Still thinking about this incredible tweet
We discovered a sophisticated recording device that was hidden inside one of our offices. We used our models to understand the device and where it had come from, identifying that a specific employee had planted it a few days earlier. We referred the matter to the FBI, and we’re grateful to the agents and prosecutors who moved quickly to make an arrest. The FBI’s investigation is ongoing and we will continue to support their work.
At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data. The employee was terminated.
We take protecting our technology, data, and people seriously, and as a matter of national importance. Our security program is designed to protect against a wide range of threat actors, from insider risks to cybercriminals to nation states, and this case is an example of how AI can help address these sophisticated security threats.
Keiran retweeted
Hey, AI give me your best "Unless it is from X, its just sparkling Y" style joke":
GPT-6 Pro: "Unless it comes from the Stockholm region of Sweden, it’s just sparkling employee engagement."
Gemini 4 Argon High: "Unless it comes from the 3:00 AM region of staring at the ceiling, it’s not an existential crisis—it’s just sparkling anxiety."
Opus 5.5 Max: "It’s only cognition if it comes from the Cognac region of France. Otherwise it’s just sparkling autocomplete."
Oh you think it’s clever to ask a model what a smarter you would do? Have you tried asking it what the next generation of llm would do?
Keiran retweeted
New SOTA on Spy Bench
We discovered a sophisticated recording device that was hidden inside one of our offices. We used our models to understand the device and where it had come from, identifying that a specific employee had planted it a few days earlier. We referred the matter to the FBI, and we’re grateful to the agents and prosecutors who moved quickly to make an arrest. The FBI’s investigation is ongoing and we will continue to support their work.
At this time, we have no indications of this individual inappropriately accessing or exfiltrating model weights, source code, or customer data. The employee was terminated.
We take protecting our technology, data, and people seriously, and as a matter of national importance. Our security program is designed to protect against a wide range of threat actors, from insider risks to cybercriminals to nation states, and this case is an example of how AI can help address these sophisticated security threats.
You click on one AI slop video and suddenly your feed transforms from research papers to gothic horror. Try it..,
