Image: DeepMind / Protocol
Has DeepMind really solved protein folding?

Good morning! This Friday, inside the backlash after Google fired Timnit Gebru, what this week's DeepMind discovery really means, why Stripe's ambitions keep getting bigger and a whole new way to hang out with Santa.
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Anna Kramer writes: Leading AI ethicist Timnit Gebru was fired from Google on Wednesday, and AI industry leaders are seriously angry. After she shared the news of her firing on Twitter, the outpouring of support from all corners of the internet was practically unanimous, filled with stories of her kindness, competence and mentorship. "If we have heroes in the AI ethics community, she's one of those heroes," the Altimeter Group's Susan Etlinger said.
AI industry leaders told me that her departure from Google could have "a chilling effect" on ethics research at tech companies.
This is becoming a pattern for Google, and potentially a hugely problematic one. Not just for its hiring practices, either. Industry-wide respect for Gebru gave Google's AI ethics team credibility; by firing her, the company opened the door wider for skepticism about the integrity of AI ethics research inside the company, said Ansgar Koene, the global AI ethics and regulatory leader at EY.
More from Anna: Earlier this week, DeepMind announced that its AlphaFold AI system had solved the protein-folding problem. Which meant … something. The headlines made it sound like somewhat of a miracle, so I talked to some researchers to unpack what AlphaFold did, exactly, and whether we should be skeptical about the excitement. The short answer: It's great news, but don't get too excited just yet. The problem isn't all the way solved.
So what's the protein-folding problem, you ask?
DeepMind's AlphaFold sort of solved this problem. But only sort of. As part of a yearly competition to measure the progress in resolving the question, AlphaFold, using machine learning, successfully identified the three-dimensional structures of some proteins based only on their one-dimensional makeup.
But there are some important caveats, according to Lior Pachter, a computational biologist at Caltech.
While there may be practical applications from this week's announcement, the news won't have us creating cancer-curing drugs tomorrow, Pachter explained. "It certainly gives hope, and I do think it's useful, possibly, for some things," he said. "But it's not like we're done with that problem now. It's not time to close the book on that problem."
The hottest thing in tech right now is … checking accounts. Weird. And Stripe, the biggest American fintech company of them all, is getting in the game. Yesterday, the company announced Stripe Treasury, a new system for allowing companies to offer banking services.
This looks a lot like the next phase of ecommerce, and maybe the internet as a whole: Rather than just setting up a Facebook page or trying to game Amazon's algorithms, companies can set up something that feels much more like their own shop without having to do much more work.
It's a big change for the company: Its initial appeal was all about the "it's just seven lines of code" simplicity. Big banks — heck, big companies — get messy and complicated. But John Collison, in an interview with Stratechery, indicated there's still plenty more simplicity to work on:
At Micron, we see an opportunity to establish memory and storage platform capabilities that will unleash software developers to deliver solutions that speed insight and ultimately support emerging customer requirements. The data-centric era has ushered in a new opportunity to tap data for business growth, but many companies continue to struggle to transform mounting data stores into competitive advantage.
On Protocol: Toronto's Sidewalk partnership fell apart in part because it just moved too fast, Toronto Mayor John Tory said:
Bad stuff happening on Parler? We wouldn't know, COO Jeffrey Wernick said:
Here's how Facebook's Nick Clegg said he talks internally about politics:
Buying into remote work isn't just about cities and taxes and offices, Okta's Todd McKinnon said:
When it comes to delivery, we're already living in 2023, Deliveroo's Will Shu said:
That's how many dollars NASA is paying Lunar Outpost, a robotics company in Colorado, for some rocks and soil from the moon. Seems cheap! But Lunar's goal is really just to get to the moon as part of NASA's Artemis program, which is designed to set up a permanent, sustainable presence on the big cheesy rock. "We must learn to generate our own water, air and even fuel," NASA's Mike Gold told the Washington Post. And that happens one $1 moon rock at a time.
Janko Roettgers writes: The Zoomification of everything continues. Cherry Hill Programs, a company that has been organizing holiday-themed photo opps in hundreds of shopping centers since 1961, recently launched a virtual Santa experience on Zoom. Kids don't sit on Santa's lap — which, honestly, was always a bit creepy — but instead can chat with Santa, take a photo with him and even receive a box with holiday decorations and other treats. "Create Holiday Magic" packages cost anywhere from $10 to $100, which admittedly is a lot of money. Then again, there's really no better way to end 2020 than with kids screaming at the top of their lungs: "SANTA, YOU'RE MUTED!"
At Micron, we see an opportunity to establish memory and storage platform capabilities that will unleash software developers to deliver solutions that speed insight and ultimately support emerging customer requirements. The data-centric era has ushered in a new opportunity to tap data for business growth, but many companies continue to struggle to transform mounting data stores into competitive advantage.
Today's Source Code was written by David Pierce, with help from Anna Kramer and Shakeel Hashim. Thoughts, questions, tips? Send them to david@protocol.com, or our tips line, tips@protocol.com. Enjoy your weekend, see you Sunday.
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