What DeepMind’s AlphaFold 2 really achieved (2020)
> Consider, for example, the possibility that Alphabet decides to commercially exploit AlphaFold, for example — is it reasonable that they make profit off such a large body of research paid almost exclusively by the taxpayers? To what extent is the information created by publicly available research — made public, mind you, to stimulate further public research — belong to the public, and under what conditions could it be used in for-profit initiatives?<p>Maybe I have a wrong conception of what research is supposed to achieve, but commercializing new insights is <i>absolutely</i> one of the intended outcomes. One would sure hope that taxpayer money isn't funneled into research to... just enable more research. At some point the public should tangibly benefit from it, which is not achieved by writing more papers.<p>This all notwithstanding the fact that DeepMind intends to make AlphaFold open source and available to the community.