Folding as a Service
AlphaFold is one of those technologies that has the ability to find breakthroughs that dramatically improve the human condition. We’re also at the beginning of applications of this technology and other companies are competing in this space.
One of the challenges that these companies will fast is preventing its misuse and bad actors creating horrible technologies that can kill us. RadioLab did an episode recently called “40,000 Recipes for Murder”. Check it out here.
However, the question might be will some of these discoveries be so potentially beneficial to humanity that we might forgo the traditional incentives to patent them? How do we then measure what is of human-changing significance? How do we still incentivize people and companies to expend the effort.
It might make sense for those using the technology or developing new versions of it to agree to govern that its use is for good and to donate processing time to specific causes, maybe in exchange for tax or other credits.
We need to find a way for the benefits of these amazing technologies to be distributed and not concentrated among a few.
