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Comment by 331c8c71 | Hacker News Reader

> Are we gonna get the same pushback from medical researchers if the models cure xyz diseases?

Lol. As long as the process aka trials is respected not many would complain.

The feedback loop required to make progress is very different in medicine compared to math.

The trials process is the moat. There's already founders using AI to treat their cancers, and it's all about skipping trials and jumping straight to "I consent, I'll fund it, let's try it". The general public might get access to this in 10 years, but employees at AI companies will have access much much sooner.

https://sytse.com/cancer/

What's the success rate there?

At least in Sid's case, it went from the oncologist saying "I have no more drugs I would recommend, no trials available" (slide 7) to "I currently have no evidence of disease" (slide 18). I don't know beyond that or beyond Sid's case - or a similar story of an Australian who treated a cancer tumour their dog had with a similar AI / personalized vaccine process.

My understanding of what Sid's describing is that you do RNA sequencing, a whole genome sequencing, feed that into frontier AI (if it will still let you), and somewhere along the way give the information the AI finds to people who can use it make a personalized mRNA vaccine, specifically for you and your cancer.

Another link here about Sid's case, it explains it didn't go through trials: "made possible through a compassionate use allowance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)".

https://www.houstonmethodist.org/newsroom/houston-methodist-...

I am not medical, so I'm happy for someone who understands better to come in and explain all the myriad ways I am wrong.

Yeah it's more like personalized therapy - often the only hope for rare diseases.

While AI has definitely helped quite a bit I am wondering how much all this research and treatments cost. Not sure the current health systems could sustain this for _everyone affected_. If ai enables it all the better.

I don't necessarily see a problem with it: if people want to try experimental therapy on themselves and can fund it, then as long as it's expensive, let them - that speeds up research. The problem with allowing anyone to opt out of safety trials is that it then creates pressure from doctors and family members to try, and then it becomes non-consensual in practice.

Trudging into the technicalities of the example still doesn't undo the question of "What is the point of mathematics? To find answers or to be a hobby?"

It's tempting to say "both", but that misses that AI is now forcing us to pick one.

I'd definitely say both and the cultural component is becoming more and more important to keep up as AI capabilities increase.

The AI is not forcing us to pick one, it already decided for us.

As 'ogogmad said upthread:

> mathematics will continue to advance, albeit differently from before. The social structures will not survive however.

What if the point of mathematics is to be mature enough to study and teach math to help humans understand it, without the ego stroke of being the first to solve a problem? Bad communicators are upset that a robot is better than they are solving problems.

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