The scientific organization biohubsupported by Mark Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chanallied itself this Wednesday with the government of the president of the United States, donald trump, Google and other institutions to invest $1.8 billion in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) capable of predicting how human cells function and what effects different diseases and treatments have on them.
The project seeks to create a kind of “virtual cell” that allows researchers to carry out experiments digitally. and anticipate which interventions might be most effective before testing them in the laboratory, according to a statement from Biohub.
The objective is to “accelerate disease research and the development of new medications,” detailed the same source.
Biohub, which coordinates the initiative, will work with the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to gather and standardize large amounts of biological data that can be used to train these models.
The organization will also develop technologies to measure and interpret cell behavior on a much larger scale than currently available.
He Department of Energy will provide more than $500 million over five years for research, measurement and computing, while the NIH will incorporate biomedical data sets developed with more than $500 million of prior federal investment.
Google DeepMind, Isomorphic Labs and Meta will jointly contribute another $300 million.
The initiative, called Virtual Biology Initiative, does not imply that a virtual cell capable of replacing real experiments already exists, but seeks to build the data, technologies and models necessary to make it possible.
The promoters hope that these tools will allow them to identify possible treatments and promising experiments before taking them to the laboratory.
The announcement comes eight days after Zuckerberg participated along with other top technology executives, including those from Nvidia, Amazon, Microsoft and Tesla, in a lunch with Trump and other senior members of his administration at the White House to discuss the development and safeguards of artificial intelligence.
At that meeting, businesspeople agreed on voluntary safety principles for AI and Trump defended the sector’s self-regulation.