Sean & Greg — Biology and ML for Drug Discovery

Sean & Greg — Biology and ML for Drug Discovery

Author: Lukas Biewald December 2, 2021 Duration: 55:25

Sean McClain is the founder and CEO, and Gregory Hannum is the VP of AI Research at Absci, a biotech company that's using deep learning to expedite drug discovery and development.

Lukas, Sean, and Greg talk about why Absci started investing so heavily in ML research (it all comes back to the data), what it'll take to build the GPT-3 of DNA, and where the future of pharma is headed. Sean and Greg also share some of the challenges of building cross-functional teams and combining two highly specialized fields like biology and ML.

The complete show notes (transcript and links) can be found here: http://wandb.me/gd-sean-and-greg

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Connect with Sean and Greg:

📍 Sean's Twitter: https://twitter.com/seanrmcclain

📍 Greg's Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregory_hannum

📍 Absci's Twitter: https://twitter.com/abscibio

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Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

0:53 How Absci merges biology and AI

11:24 Why Absci started investing in ML

19:00 Creating the GPT-3 of DNA

25:34 Investing in data collection and in ML teams

33:14 Clinical trials and Absci's revenue structure

38:17 Combining knowledge from different domains

45:22 The potential of multitask learning

50:43 Why biological data is tricky to work with

55:00 Outro

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Lukas Biewald hosts Gradient Dissent: Conversations on AI, a series that moves beyond theoretical discussions to examine how artificial intelligence is actually built and deployed. Each episode features a direct, unscripted talk with a leading practitioner-you’ll hear from engineers and researchers at places like NVIDIA, Meta, Google, Lyft, and OpenAI. The focus is on the tangible challenges and breakthroughs they encounter, from initial research to the complex reality of putting models into production. This isn't about abstract futures; it's a grounded look at the decisions shaping the field right now. Biewald, bringing his perspective from Weights & Biases, steers conversations toward the practical trade-offs and collaborative efforts that define modern AI work. For anyone in technology or business who wants to understand the mechanics behind the headlines, this podcast offers a rare, candid window into the process. You’ll come away with a clearer sense of how ideas become functional systems and what it really takes to operate at the cutting edge.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 100

Gradient Dissent: Conversations on AI
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