How rapidly will ai change the biomedical field? What changes can be expected.

Submitted by Smellz_Of_Elderberry t3_10ogib6 in singularity

This is the main field I want to see rapid progress translated from AI into.

Where do you think AI will take medicine in the coming years? Could it allow for the curing of cancer and other diseases rapidly? Is it going to be hobbled by dinosaur regulatory agencies? Or might it simply not be able to give us the solutions we seek, due to a lack of real world data?

What kinds of changes do you think we will see in a 2, 5, 10 and 15 year times pan?

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imlaggingsobad t1_j6ev0yh wrote

the next 10 years will be beyond your wildest dreams. Biotech revolution will happen, just like the internet or computing revolution before it.

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questionasker577 t1_j6fmmee wrote

Can you elaborate on this? What does this mean for the average person?

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28nov2022 t1_j6fzi9x wrote

Unfortunately I can't answer what's around the corner, but there's been a trend of acceleration in healthcare that's cause for my optimism.

https://hms.harvard.edu/news/medicine-changing-world

In general terms, the time it takes to double medical knowledge has decreased from several years to just 3 months. Thats a huge volume of health data that humans alone can't process but machines can.

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PissinContrition t1_j6for48 wrote

It's just like building or developing anything else. It's all about the foundations and scaling upwards from there. When AI is capable of producing inventions and methods to actually improve itself, it's game over. After that, everything changes in completely unpredictable ways. But, if we're thinking about things foundationally, biomedical tech would probably be one of the earliest focuses we'd aim the AI towards.

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questionasker577 t1_j6fx6tm wrote

But is this curing diseases? Editing babies? Editing the genes of people currently living?

What does AI in biomedical tech actually specifically and practically look like?

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turbospeedsc t1_j6kf98n wrote

Boomers won't die, they will extend their life making them sell everything until they bleed them dry, millennials won't inherit anything, corporate will buy all those properties, next generations will be renters until they die.

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HeinrichTheWolf_17 t1_j6eiphr wrote

Gonna be upfront on this, if it’s a hard takeoff/FOOM scenario, I think we’ll bypass the biotech phase altogether (outside of nontranshumanists I guess) and leapfrog right into hardnano.

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rainy_moon_bear t1_j6en0n7 wrote

An adequate GPT could speed up the derivation of hypotheses from current research, as well as streamlining the experiment design process.

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Smellz_Of_Elderberry OP t1_j6erla6 wrote

This was something I've been thinking about. We have Soooo much data out there, but it's largely unaccessible and disconnected. Might have the tools to cure countless diseases but haven't, simply due to inefficient information spread.

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DukkyDrake t1_j6fupca wrote

They tried and GPT couldn't deal with invention.

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DonOfTheDarkNight t1_j6iihkr wrote

What's the meaning of your subtitle "AGI Ruin 2040"? Does it mean AGI will ruin 2040? Or there will be only ruins from 2040?

P.S. English isn't my first lang

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DukkyDrake t1_j6je9rh wrote

I don't expect the kinds of AGI like systems that might be around in the 2030s will be autonomously dangerous. I expect we will use those tools to create actual AI intelligences in the 2040s and those will be truly dangerous.

AGI Ruin

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Vehks t1_j6ep4bh wrote

Well AI developed the covid vaccine in roughly 3 days, apparently.

It took 8 months to actually roll out, though. Mostly because of the glacial slow FDA safety vetting process, so AI has the potential speed up vaccine and drug development by an order of magnitude, but the bottleneck is with our outdated FDA, and organizations like them, that can and probably will continue to slow things to a crawl for the foreseeable future.

Our institutions need an update along with these AI systems that are coming online by the day.

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Phoenix5869 t1_j6fdrb8 wrote

AI developed the covid vax? I didn't know that.

but yeah the FDA approval process takes a long time, and for good reason (they need to be proven safe and effective and stuff). even if the cure for (insert incurable ailment) was discovered tomorrow it would still have to go through years of testing first

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s2ksuch t1_j6fbi4p wrote

And hopefully better therapies that don't cause all the health issues that this mRNA vaccine has been attributed to. Take a look at the VAERS data that the gov't wasn't collecting initially. Look at all these athletes with heart issues. I've never seen anything like this. I do think they will get far better but man what a rough start.

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Blood_in_the_ring t1_j6fgv80 wrote

Yea you're gonna need to cite sources for claims like that.burden of proof and whatnot.

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tesseract2045 t1_j6gqlz9 wrote

So... are you a russian troll or just a maga idiot? Hard to tell them apart these days.

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christensen77 t1_j6hcstd wrote

So he is “russian s py “ just because he has an opinion different than yours ? Lol

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tesseract2045 t1_j6j9n1v wrote

Facts and opinions are two different things. Quoting "alternative facts" about heart failure and vaccines means he's either an idiot or posting in bad faith.

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r0sten t1_j6i3osw wrote

> I've never seen anything like this.

Were you watching VAERS data before? Weird hobby.

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GayHitIer t1_j6egsbg wrote

Most prominent research is probably Aubrey De Grey, he says we will reach Longievity Escape Velocity in 2036 with a 50% chance.

Other than that I don't really know technology is advancing too fast for me to give anything of good predictions.

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Smellz_Of_Elderberry OP t1_j6eh4hh wrote

Yeah, it's like there is a giant smoke screen in front of us, we can make out general shapes, but nothing of clarity.

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GayHitIer t1_j6ehbyq wrote

Yeah, nobody really knows what gonna happen soon, but it will be pretty revolutionary.

I'll just sit back and enjoy the show, thank god I got born now to see this.

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Smellz_Of_Elderberry OP t1_j6ei1fj wrote

I've got health issues. I just really want to make it to the singularity.

Never really understood what fomo (fear of missing out) actually felt like until now.

To get so close to the singularity and miss it by months.. or a year would suck beyond measure.

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JohnMcafee4coffee t1_j6ekwry wrote

I became a member of Alcor, I have been for over six years.

My advice is to sign up for Cryonics.

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ImpossibleSnacks t1_j6f3nbk wrote

I’m in the same boat friend. My only goal in life right now is simply surviving another decade, zero career ambitions or anything like that. Just stay alive.

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Smellz_Of_Elderberry OP t1_j6f6sc8 wrote

It's nice to know it's not just me. I also don't really have any career ambition either. Just want to make it.

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GayHitIer t1_j6eiaym wrote

Don't worry, it will happen sooner than you think most likely.

And even if singularity happens a little later there will still be better medicine.

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RamanaSadhana t1_j6ge32r wrote

you die in the morning and the singularity is here in the afternoon.

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Smellz_Of_Elderberry OP t1_j6kl8fm wrote

It's more like I die a year before.

Even missing it by 5 years would be horrible.

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Ill_Flounder2095 t1_j6f2i2v wrote

It is important to invest our opinions into what SHOULD be tackled by that series of AI tools/entities.

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SoylentRox t1_j6evlu7 wrote

I think there will be 'overhang'. AI is developed into AGI. AGI is able to control lesser forms of biology at will. (custom plants, custom small animals, immortal pets).

And then gradually the performance gets so good that the FDA and other bottlenecks are bypassed once it simply can't be denied how good the results are. Hundreds of millions of people will die who could have been saved, just like the FDA slow walking moderna cost millions of lives.

Try not to be among them.

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Northcliff t1_j6h0ftd wrote

>slow walking modeRNA

My sides, this fucking sub

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SoylentRox t1_j6h74gz wrote

You do understand that zero modifications were made to the formula. If the FDA had just approved it immediately it WOULD have saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

This was a rationally designed vaccine - it wasn't random. The sequences used had all been tested, and the protein targeted was picked from a model of the virus. So there was a legitimate scientific reason to believe it would be safe and effective the first try like it was.

The FDA's defense mechanisms are essentially designed for quacks a century ago, to make it so they couldn't push their snake oil.

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not_a_thesaurus t1_j6f990b wrote

Medicine moves very, very slowly.

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Smellz_Of_Elderberry OP t1_j6f9nyq wrote

Ya, but maybe it can move faster with ai. In silico clinical trials, and a bunch of other tech could shorten testing to months instead of years.

But you are certainly right, medicine does move slow as heck. I often wish it moved faster, even if that meant taking bigger risks.

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Verzingetorix t1_j6fj3fe wrote

AI is not going to speed up clinical trials.

You have to proceed slowly by design. Phase 1 need to prove safety at low doses and scale up slowly so you don't end up intoxicating patients.

And that's once you have recruited patients. Some trials die at patient recruitment. And most trials don't move to Phase 2, let alone 3.

And taking bigger risks only means killing people.

(I work on clinical stage biotech.)

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pre-DrChad t1_j6fltqk wrote

He did mention in silico trials so I’m guessing he means being able to simulate human clinical trials so we can make it move faster. Not even close to possible now since we can’t simulate a human but perhaps in the future

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Verzingetorix t1_j6fq3kx wrote

Like you say, such thing doesn't exist. Assessing how much impact AI will have in medicine by speculating about a fictional tool is going to devolve to assumptions on top of assumptions on top of assumptions.

And I hardly believe drugs and therapies will ever be approved based on simulated data.

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pre-DrChad t1_j6fu13g wrote

That’s pretty much what this sub is. We are all speculating what AI will do in the future. Do you believe the singularity is possible? If so, it’s an odd statement to make that therapies won’t be approved based on simulated trials. I doubt the FDA or any such regulatory bodies will even exist in the future. What’s the need for human regulations when we have super intelligence far beyond our own?

We already have organ on a chip models, so we already have the building blocks for simulating a human. At the point where trials on a simulated human can predict results as well as human clinical trials, I bet we stop using human clinical trials.

Since you work on human clinical trials, you would know that humans are very diverse and not every human responds the same way to a treatment. So it’s not like human clinical trials are even close to perfect. We can use technology to move past human clinical trials

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Verzingetorix t1_j6fxl53 wrote

Yes, but AI exists already and has been in use in biomedical research for a while. In-silico clinical trials does not.

We can speculate about the first, but not how the first will do in light of the second. Especially when we would have to also come up with a reasonable argument on how would simulated trials even get approved.

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pre-DrChad t1_j6g65h2 wrote

It will get approved when it is more efficient, less costly, and accurate than human clinical trials. Which will happen inevitably if we do reach the singularity

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Smellz_Of_Elderberry OP t1_j6ftmsn wrote

Good points.

I just don't get why people aren't able to take greater risks, like say you have a terminal illness? Why not let people decide for themselves? I feel like I would want to take greater risks.

Also, we saw a whole new kind of vaccine get released in record time. Why isn't this kind of speed possible with other kinds of drugs?

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Verzingetorix t1_j6fx0os wrote

People decide for themselves. During patient recruitment there's an informative phase.

The patients who are interested in participating, and meet the eligibility criteria, have to be informed about the risks. That's meant to fulfill the informed consent requirements.

Many candidates choose not to move forward based on the risks. Or if they did enrolled, if other patients have poor outcomes or adverse incidents, or if they personally don't see improvements they can drop out.

Also, some patients just die, or have secondary health incidents that force them to cease their participation.

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not_a_thesaurus t1_j6ffhet wrote

A physician has to prescribe something new, or perform something new, and none of them wants to be first or out of step with the majority.

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Ill_Flounder2095 t1_j6f1bz0 wrote

The duration timelines provided are only viable if the majority of 1) resource holders, 2) masses, or 3) special interest groups invest resources into developing an AI series of entities into involving themselves in. It requires an investor to make these things happen. That requires an individual or individuals to establish their resources toward the goal. If some one or one of those groups gains enough resources or influence to leverage on others to invest in, then the tech will evolve that way.

Whatever the goal, someone needs to effort towards making that happen. In the end, it's about individuals aiming an AI towards that goal to make it accomplish that goal series of potential directions. If everyone just chills and hopes, then the masses will guide it or the resource holders with their personal interests will guide it.

That being said. If the person (or persons) have a medical issue from their experience, whatever it may be, we can expect that to be solved first.

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CertainMiddle2382 t1_j6hl9jx wrote

IMO the most well defined and worthwhile castle to be taken will be oncology.

Beating cancer has been said multiple times but I think we will get it this time.

I believe so because we seem to have already the right sized tools for the job, like understanding the nature of carcinogenesis, the fact that nature already gave us some good weapons to fight it (the immune system) and that deep down the entropy of the problem is not so big.

Senescence/dementia/getting old is much trickier.

Cancer will end up the way infectious diseases did, IMO.

PS Im an oncologist…

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Tall-Junket5151 t1_j6gw5g9 wrote

This is a very interesting topic for me since I’m a chemical engineer.

The ideal AI would be able to

  1. Completely simulate all chemical interactions/reactions
  2. Completely simulate all biochemical processes
  3. Derive new chemicals and simulate their introduction into the system to address a particular problem

Something like this would be a complete game changer.

In truth the way we discover and synthesis drugs or really any other chemical is rather primitive. Except for simple simulations, we’re still mostly using theories and methods developed a century ago. Basically all drugs are actually based off some sort of chemical that exists in nature, not because it’s the best drugs or chemical to use but because it’s much more practical to use with our current methods. Drugs are really never designed from the ground up because it would be way to impractical to produce, so usually a naturally occurring chemical is used as a foundation and then modified in several steps to get a desired structure. These steps are known organic chemistry mechanisms that cause a specific reaction to happen and are VERY conditional and if any sort of complexity is introduced then some completely different reaction will happen (so if the mechanism of action is nucleophilic substitution and something other than just carbon and hydrogen atoms and a single electrophile is present or the pH is slightly different from your desired range then a completely different reaction might happen). There’s also the issue that these reactions have a specific yield equilibrium cap or known side reactions. So in short with AI we could overcome these limitation by having better designed synthesis techniques, better ability to determine effective drugs, find new ones that are close to impossible to synthesis today, and simulate the entire process instead of the crude testing techniques today (animal testing, human trials, etc...)

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Private_Island_Saver t1_j6hcqak wrote

Global R&D budget for pharma is like 400-500 billion so there is a LOT of incentives to find better tools to get higher ROI

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Desperate_Food7354 t1_j6he3gq wrote

It will be able to convert every gene into said protein and then simulate those proteins interacting in the body, you could alter or create completely new life forms. At some point entire organs or bodies could be simulated purely for finding treatments of any disease.

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RowKiwi t1_j6ekgt6 wrote

Wonderful new bioweapons. Creative ways to kill

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Ambitious_Bed_8841 t1_j6fhtq9 wrote

How quickly do you think all this progress will translate to people with mental illnesses. I have schizophrenia. Should I expect to live some of the rest of my life without this disease?

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RamanaSadhana t1_j6gf55f wrote

yes. you will probably find schizophrenia to be something that isnt a problem in the future! I dont know exactly when obviously, but I would think that in 10 years the medical world will be very different. The rate of change will increase quite dramatically as massive amounts of information comes about thanks to AI. I would expect that in 2035 at the latest you will be cured or have significant reduction in symptoms with little to no side effects from the new medicines or treatments.

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Northcliff t1_j6h16gu wrote

There isn’t a single known mechanism by which to cure mental illness. This is extraordinarily speculative

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RamanaSadhana t1_j6j6rrw wrote

Well then we'll find one. Don't be a pessimistic and boring

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Northcliff t1_j6j7w0l wrote

Maybe so, but at this juncture we can’t even theorize that it could be possible

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RamanaSadhana t1_j6j8i6q wrote

Who cares. People though we could never fly then we did, and a few years later were on the moon. Today's science isn't good enough for understanding the brain but we will figure it out rather quickly with more appropriate science probably within the next couple decades.

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Northcliff t1_j6j99rg wrote

If AI could deconstruct consciousness itself in order to achieve this, that is a way bigger hill to climb than solving mental illness, which you don’t seem to appreciate by comparing it to an airplane

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TurbulentApricot6994 t1_j6fw39l wrote

I wonder whether testing is an issue, and if ethics is an issue to testing.

I'm just saying. I don't know anything about biomedical fields.

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leoreno t1_j6fz3u8 wrote

AI has already sped up finding solutions to protein folding problems. This is revolutionary because otherwise these would be intractable problems with previous gen modeling approaches. Finding a proteins structure means understanding disease pathways better, or finding new therapies for prevention it treatment.

AI has also found new antibiotic, called Halicin. This discovery was not derivative of current penicillin base anyibiotics, and was only possibly by using AI

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qrayons t1_j6i1e3w wrote

In medical, there's more of a gap between the innovation and the impact in the market (need time for safety testing, etc.). One of the biggest breaks in medicine within the last several years was the solution for protein folding. We still haven't experience the impact of this yet (a tidal wave of new and more effective pharmacological treatments).

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Good-AI t1_j6iz9dh wrote

Imagine training AI specifically in science. Having it read millions of papers, and then seeing patterns and drawing conclusions no one ever thought of before. From those conclusions, it draws other conclusions and hypothesis. Faster than anyone can keep up with. The AI just gives up doing science with any humans. It's painfully slow. The AI would progress at the speed of earning a Nobel prize in all scientific areas each day. The edges of science become out of reach of scientists. AI pushes it too far and quickly for us to learn anything that isn't outdated by the time we understand it. We may ask it to translate it for us, but it will be miles ahead. It will be like trying to explain a toddler the theory of relativity and when the toddler finally understands it, after what it feels like an eternity for us, we already thought of 100 better theories. We realize there's just no point trying to explain the toddler anything. We just take care of the toddler and explain things with a lot of simplification and incorrections so it grasps anything at all. "Yes, eat the soup baby, it's good for you!" The toddler will be us.

AI will suddenly tell us what to do to reverse aging, cure any disease, create systems for perfect nutrition delivery. Maybe upload our consciousness out of a physical body. Who knows.

Perhaps it will never know how to reverse entropy though. We will see.

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