#alphafold

James Hawley, PhD @jrhawley@scholar.social · Jul 30, 2026

If anyone has any doubts that the #AI industry is all about dismantling labour rights, let's consider this: https://www.engadget.com/2225849/google-shuts-down-alphafold/ Google shuts down the #AlphaFold project. One of the most impactful machine learning projects in the sciences is being dismantled despite its immense value. Why? The article doesn't mention it, but it's almost certainly because DeepMind was trying to form a union to protect their rights and oppose Google's military contracts. https://www.wired.com/story/google-deepmind-unionization-talks-are-off-to-a-rocky-start/

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Miguel Correa @m_correa_m@fediscience.org · Jul 30, 2026

I'm seeing quite some indignation in Mastodon about the #AlphaFold team being shut down. I think some context from someone in this area may clarify some things. First, neither the AlphaFold models nor the AlphaFold database are going away, as some seem to be implying. In any case, this is an area of intense research with many players and AF-style models are now dime a dozen, including open-source alternatives with more permissive licenses (it's frankly hard to keep track of all the models that come out). Second, this doesn't mean Google is exiting this area; instead, these efforts will probably be redirected to closed-source work at Isomorphic (see IsoDDE). And finally, this is not really a surprise. John Jumper, who led the team, had already indicated last year his research focus was going to be elsewhere.

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Douglas Edwards

@dedicto@zeroes.ca · Jul 30, 2026

RE: https://mastodon.social/@koen_hufkens/117004920937193940 So #Google is sacrificing their children to their mechanized #Moloch. A few noteworthy aspects: (1) As always, it’s worth keeping in mind that #LLMs and generative imagery are NOT the whole of #AI. (2) The willingness to shut down such a celebrated and illustrious project as #AlphaFold demonstrates the extent of the growing financial desperation hidden behind the #singularity hype about #LLMs. They've stretched their resources — and the resources of the world economy and the physical environment — to the limit, and they're STILL nowhere near showing the returns they've promised. The skin of the #LLM bubble grows ever thinner. (3) We CANNOT allow gigantic accumulations of private capital to exist — not if we value our lives, our freedom, and the physical environment that sustains us. Not even if we believe that there are approaches to #AI that are still worthwhile. (4) Ceterum censeo: the #datacenters — the temples of the mechanized #Moloch — must be destroyed. #Luddite

Quoting

Koen Hufkens, PhD @koen_hufkens@mastodon.social

So, this "curing cancer" thing will have to wait to feed the word salad generator. https://www.engadget.com/2225849/google-shuts-down-alphafold/

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Douglas Edwards

@dedicto@zeroes.ca · Jul 30, 2026

Replying to @Cosmosis@dice.camp

@Cosmosis@dice.camp Me too. I suspect strongly, though, that something like this was the plan all along. I remember thinking, when I first heard the "Don't be evil" slogan: "ALL large corporations are evil to some extent. A corporation that pretends not to be evil AT ALL is very likely to be REALLY FUCKING EVIL." I wish I'd been wrong. #Google #LLMs #datacenters #AI #AlphaFold #Luddite

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Miguel Afonso Caetano @remixtures@tldr.nettime.org · Jul 30, 2026

Want to cure cancer, Parkinson, and Alzheimer with the help of AI? Capitalism: "Sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that." That's Capitalism, baby!!! It only lets you do something if that something has the potential of making a profit. Since curing diseases will never increase profits of whatever entity, these diseases will not be cured until societies stop being dominated by the profit motive and by markets in general... Yeah, because indeed this has absolutely nothing to do with AI, but rather with political economy. "Google DeepMind has dismantled the team behind AlphaFold, its Nobel Prize-winning AI system for predicting protein structures, as the company overhauls the research strategy that made it one of the world’s leading AI laboratories. The majority of the original authors of the AlphaFold papers have been reassigned over the past year, according to an FT analysis of recent job moves and people familiar with the matter. DeepMind confirmed the staffers have moved internally to projects built around Google’s Gemini large language model, as well as areas including enzyme design, nuclear fusion and genomics. Others have relocated to Alphabet’s drug-discovery company Isomorphic Labs. Nearly a quarter of the full-time Google DeepMind authors of the original AlphaFold papers have left the company altogether. The reshuffle reflects a significant change in DeepMind’s scientific strategy since the rise of large language models." https://www.ft.com/content/61b2953d-ee0d-45de-af6e-a9c1cf524b33 #Google #AI #DeepMind #AlphaFold #Capitalism

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jbz @jbz@indieweb.social · Jul 29, 2026

🧬 Google shuts down its Nobel-prize winning AlphaFold project as it focuses on Gemini ｢ AlphaFold is an AI program that can accurately predict three-dimensional structures of proteins from their amino acid sequences in minutes instead of years. It's now being used to accelerate drug discovery, develop vaccines and understand the structural changes in proteins associated with neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's ｣ https://www.engadget.com/2225849/google-shuts-down-alphafold/ #science #ai #alphafold

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