[acapybara]

This reminds me of the criticisms of Copilot (GPT-3 application to generate computer code).

Many engineers will say it doesn't code. It just regurgitates and remixes the data it was trained on. It just makes "meta-heuristic guesses."

But anyone taking an honest and objective view of it can see that Copilot does add value. It's no substitute for a real, human, engineer, but it clearly adds value.

I don't think AlphaFold would get to this level of funding, resource commitment, etc. if it was adding 0 value.

Being a domain expert, I'm curious what value, if any, you think a large transformer model could add to the domain of protein folding. Is it really zero value, in your view?

[misnome]

> I don't think AlphaFold would get to this level of funding, resource commitment, etc. if it was adding 0 value

They didn't say that it added zero value, that's entirely you. They said that it doesn't solve the problem on its' own, which is true.

[m00x]

The computer doesn't solve problems on its own, but it is objectively a breakthrough technology. It's pretty clear that AlphaFold is a phenomenal innovation.

[mnd999]

Copilot adds value to Gitlab if that’s what you mean.

[falcor84]

Did you mean "GitHub", or did I miss the joke?

[mnd999]

Yeah, you missed it.

GitHub ripping off everyone’s code to build copilot has caused a small (not as big as it should have been imho) exodus of open source projects to Gitlab and others.

I still don’t see how it’s a good idea to import unknown code with unknown licenses into your project, but apparently if copilot does it it’s okay.