[roenxi]

> Who, in databases, has claimed that "in the next 10, 15 years we can actually have a real crack at solving all disease"?

I doubt anyone claimed 10-15 years specifically, but it does actually seem like a pretty reasonable claim that without databases progress will be a snails pace and with databases it will be more of a horses trot. I imagine the human body requires a fair amount of data to be organised to analyse and simulate all the parts and I'd recommend storing all that in some sort of database.

This might count as unsatisfying semantics, but there is a huge leap going from physical ledgers and ad-hoc formats to organised and standardised data storage (ie, a database - even if it is just excel sheets that counts to me). Suddenly scientists can record and theorise on order(s) of magnitude more raw material and the results are interchangeable! That is a big deal and a necessary step to make the sort of progress we can make in modern times.

Regardless, it does seem fair to compare the AI boom to the renaissance or industrial revolution. We appear to be poking at the biggest thing to ever be poked in history.

[ecb_penguin]

> but it does actually seem like a pretty reasonable claim that without databases progress will be a snails pace and with databases it will be more of a horses trot.

This isn't what anyone is saying

[roenxi]

Fair point; let me put it this way:

Database hype was relatively muted and databases made a massive impact on our ability to cure diseases. AI hype is wildly higher and there is a reasonable chance it will lead to the curing of all diseases - it is going to have a much bigger impact than databases did.

The 10-15 year timeframe is obviously impossible for logistic reasons if nothing else - but the end goal is plausible and the direction we need to head in next as a society is clear. As unreasonable claims go it is unobjectionable and I'd rather be standing with Hassabis in the push to end disease than with naysayers worried that we won't do it as quickly as an uninformed optimist expects.

[ecb_penguin]

> there is a reasonable chance it will lead to the curing of all diseases

This is complete nonsense. AI might help with the _identification_ of diseases, but there is nothing to support the idea that every human ailment is curable.

Perhaps AI can help find cures, but the idea that it can cure every human ailment deserves to be mocked.

> I'd rather be standing with Hassabis in the push to end disease than with naysayers worried that we won't do it as quickly as an uninformed optimist expects.

It's a good thing those aren't our only options!

[roenxi]

> but there is nothing to support the idea that every human ailment is curable.

There is; we can conceivably cure everything we know about right now. There isn't a law of nature that says organisms have to live less than centuries and we can start talking seriously about brain-in-jar or consciousness uploading now that we appear to be developing the computing tech to support it.

Everything that exists stops eventually but we're on the cusp of some pretty massive changes here. We're moving from a world with 8 1-in-a-billion people wandering around to one with an arbitrary number of superhuman intelligences. That is going to have a major impact larger than anything we've seen to date. A bunch of science fiction stuff is manifesting in real time.

[rurp]

I think you're only reinforcing the contrast. Yes databases are massivly useful and have been self evidently so for decades; and yet, none of the current outlandish AI claims were ever made about them. VCs weren't running around 30 or 40 years ago claiming that SQL would cure disease and usher in a utopia.

Yes LLMs are useful and might become vastly more useful, but the hype:value ratio is currently insane. Technologies that have produced like 9 orders of magnitude more value to date have never recieved the hype that LLMs are getting.