Acemoglu questions whether AI drug-discovery promises can justify massive AI investment
asusarla · x · 2026-10-03
MIT economist and Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu poses a fourth uncomfortable question about AI: can large, rapid AI investments really be justified on promised health benefits?
His core points:
- Despite major effort, AI has so far produced few actual gains in drug discovery or new cures;
- A new paper by Ryan Hill and Carolyn Stein finds that while AlphaFold's protein-structure predictions spurred substantial downstream scientific work, new-drug payoffs haven't materialized (the thread cuts off mid-quote).
He's pushing back on the common framing that health benefits justify current investment levels and light regulation, and that slowing AI would harm humanity by delaying cures.
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