Priscilla Chan is co-founder of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI). She discusses CZI's approach to precision medicine and therapeutics on The a16z Podcast.
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Chan: Scientists thought CZI's goal to cure all disease was crazy
“When we first set out that, the goal to cure and prevent disease by the end of the century, people, like, honestly, Most scientists couldn't look at us with a straight face. And they're like, you're crazy. Yes. And it was true because if you just decided to sp…”
Assertion Supported
Chan: CZI built a 1,000-GPU cluster and plans a 10,000-GPU expansion
“We were the first to really build a large-scale compute cluster. A thousand now where we have plans to move to the 10,000 range.”
Disclosure
Chan: LLMs provided the breakthrough needed to analyze CZI's biological datasets
“We were already Building tools to measure interesting data. Building the data sets. But we didn't really know what to do with them yet. And large language models coming onto the scene, we're like, wow, we can make sense of all of this now.”
Insight
Chan: Virtual cell models provide utility even without perfect accuracy
“But I don't think it needs to be a hundred percent accurate to be useful. Because you just want to be able to de-risk the idea on the front end a little bit. And the more and more you de-risk it, the more efficient it gets, obviously. But it'll be useful if yo…”
Prediction Held up
Chan: CZI is consolidating biohubs and AI teams into one philanthropy
“Under Alex's leadership, we are going to come together as the biohub, a an operating philanthropy where we are doing the science,”
Disclosure
Chan: How CZI selects 10-to-15-year scientific Grand Challenges
“When we looked at the Grand Challenges for, on the 10 to fifteen-year time horizon, it needs to be, like, when you look at it, you're like, I see a path. Not everything needs to be solved for us to take it on. In fact, if everything's solved, then that feels l…”