Structural biologist to mathematicians: we celebrated AlphaFold, got a Nobel, and kept our jobs
RexDouglass · x · 2026-10-10
Structural biologist Zachary Berndsen pushed back on the math community's backlash against AI, recalling that when DeepMind released AlphaFold and the AlphaFold DB — trained on the PDB, the collective work of the entire structural biology community — researchers celebrated rather than protested. The effort earned DeepMind a Nobel Prize, and structural biologists didn't lose their jobs; the tool empowered them to go further. His point: AI is best met as an amplifier of research, not a threat.
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