Patrick Hsu is co-founder of the Arc Institute. He explains why traditional university structures slow down scientific progress.
Opinion
Hsu: AI pharma commercial pitches outpace fundamental research breakthroughs
“I think in many ways the kind of pitch and the framing of these companies precedes The fundamental research capability breakthroughs.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hsu: Current AI biological models are at GPT-1 or GPT-2 capability levels
“I find it helpful to frame these in terms of like GPT one, two, three, four, five capabilities, right? And I think most people would agree we're somewhere between GPT one and two, right?”
Assertion Partly supported
Hsu: GLP-1 market value exceeds 40 years of biotech startups combined
“The first is the amount of market cap added to Lilly and Novo based on the, you know, development of GLP ones. It's like over a trillion dollars is, is more, you know, I mean, NOAA stock has decreased a lot. So you know, trillion dollars, let's say, is more th…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hsu: Physical synthesis and testing will remain AI drug discovery's bottleneck
“If we play this out, right? And let's say these AI models work, right? And you can make a trillion binders in silico that will, you know, be exquisite drug matter, right? We still need to make these things physically and test them in animals and hopefully pred…”
Insight
Hsu: Virtual cell models do not need mechanistic explanations to be useful
“And I would say similarly with a virtual cell model, it may not tell me literally why, just like a alpha fold doesn't tell me literally why did the protein fold this way and how, but it just told me the end state and it was reasonably accurate. I think that wo…”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hsu: Arc Institute's moonshot is building virtual cells using foundation models
“Our moonshot is really to make virtual cells at Arc and simulate human biology with foundation models, and, you know, we'd like to figure out something that feels useful for experimentalists, people who are skeptical about technology, you know, they just want …”