Chan Zuckerberg Initiative Shifts Bulk of Philanthropy, 'Going All In on AI-Powered Biology'
The Associated Press reports that "For the past decade, Dr. Priscilla Chan and her husband Mark Zuckerberg have focused part of their philanthropy on a lofty goal — 'to cure, prevent or manage all disease' — if not in their lifetime, then in their children's."
During that decade they also funded other initiatives (including underprivileged schools and immigration reform), according to the article. But there's a change coming:
Now, the billionaire couple is shifting the bulk of their philanthropic resources to Biohub, the pair's science organization, and focusing on using artificial intelligence to accelerate scientific discovery. The idea is to develop virtual, AI-based cell models to understand how they work in the human body, study inflammation and use AI to "harness the immune system" for disease detection, prevention and treatment. "I feel like the science work that we've done, the Biohub model in particular, has been the most impactful thing that we have done. So we want to really double down on that. Biohub is going to be the main focus of our philanthropy going forward," Zuckerberg said Wednesday evening at an event at the Biohub Imaging Institute in Redwood City, California.... Chan and Zuckerberg have pledged 99% of their lifetime wealth — from shares of Meta Platforms, where Zuckerberg is CEO — toward these efforts...
On Thursday, Chan and Zuckerberg also announced that Biohub has hired the team at EvolutionaryScale, an AI research lab that has created large-scale AI systems for the life sciences...
Biohub's ambition for the next years and decades is to create virtual cell systems that would not have been possible without recent advances in AI. Similar to how large language models learn from vast databases of digital books, online writings and other media, its researchers and scientists are working toward building virtual systems that serve as digital representations of human physiology on all levels, such as molecular, cellular or genome. As it is open source — free and publicly available — scientists can then conduct virtual experiments on a scale not possible in physical laboratories.
"We will continue the model we've pioneered of bringing together scientists and engineers in our own state-of-the-art labs to build tools that advance the field," according to Thursday's blog post. "We'll then use those tools to generate new data sets for training new biological AI models to create virtual cells and immune systems and engineer our cells to detect and treat disease....
"We have also established the first large-scale GPU cluster for biological research, as well as the largest datasets around human cell types. This collection of resources does not exist anywhere else."
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Ruth Langsford, 65, admits 'senior moments' leave her feeling 'really frightened' after she lost her father to Alzheimer's
The Loose Women host, 65, lost her father Dennis in 2012 from complications from dementia, with her mother, Joan, 94, also being diagnosed with the disease.
World's Largest Cargo Sailboat Completes Historic First Atlantic Crossing
Long-time Slashdot reader AmiMoJo shared this report from Marine Insight:
The world's largest cargo sailboat, Neoliner Origin, completed its first transatlantic voyage on 30 October despite damage to one of its sails during the journey. The 136-metre-long vessel had to rely partly on its auxiliary motor and its remaining sail after the aft sail was damaged in a storm shortly after departure... Neoline, the company behind the project, said the damage reduced the vessel's ability to perform fully on wind power...
The Neoliner Origin is designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 to 90 percent compared to conventional diesel-powered cargo ships. According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), global shipping produces about 3 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions...
The ship can carry up to 5,300 tonnes of cargo, including containers, vehicles, machinery, and specialised goods. It arrived in Baltimore carrying Renault vehicles, French liqueurs, machinery, and other products. The Neoliner Origin is scheduled to make monthly voyages between Europe and North America, maintaining a commercial cruising speed of around 11 knots.
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Celebrity Traitors' Joe Marler breaks his silence after 'heartbreaking' show loss and pal Nick Mohammed's 'betrayal' during nail-biting finale
Despite Joe, 35, correctly guessing that Alan and Cat Burns , 25, were the remaining Traitors, he failed to convince the others and found himself being banished at the last minute.
Prince Philip's brave Highlanders to be evicted from barracks to make way for asylum seekers
War heroes are to be evicted from their historic base to make way for the UK Government 's controversial plans to house asylum seekers in MoD barracks.
Now it's the LADY Mayor's Show! Lord Mayor's Show changes its name for first time in its 800-year history as West Ham-born businesswoman takes the title
Dame Susan Langley DBE becomes the third female mayor, but the first to insist that this year's Lord Mayor's Show changes its name to the Lady Mayor's Show.
'SHAMEFUL' - Family had to bring camp bed to A&E for 83-year-old grandad as he waited 12 hours
George Morris, from Torrance near Glasgow , began shivering and shaking as his health declined during the arduous wait to be seen by 'frazzled' doctors.
Dramatic moment Ukrainian kamikaze drone destroys one of Putin's most valuable air defence systems in Crimea special forces mission
Footage released by Kyiv shows Ukraine's Special Operations Forces (SOF) wiping out an S-400 Triumph missile launcher in the occupied Crimean village of Uyutne, near Yevpatoria.
Shoppers 'don't feel safe' as third city centre stabbing in a month leaves woman fighting for life after being knifed in the neck at bus stop by 'random attacker'
The victim, aged in her 30s, suffered a 'serious injury' in the attack that unfolded in Birmingham city centre shortly before 9pm last night.
My daily energy drink habit landed me in the hospital with severe organ damage
A 21-year-old man in Turkey suffered a severe and potentially deadly disease after following a bizarre habit to try to prepare for an upcoming race, doctors warned in a medical journal.
Cats smothering babies with pillows and moms throwing kids out of planes: The violent videos pushed to toddlers that every parent should worry about
Video producer and AI consultant Jeremy Carrasco says his research shows that disturbing clips are being served up by algorithms typically geared towards kids.
The award-winning Essex pub with cosy fire, 'secret garden' and a strange rule
It's loved by locals and visitors to this Essex city alike
Is the poppy in decline? As many WW2 veterans remember fallen comrades for possibly the last time, some sellers say fewer people are buying the historic symbol of remembrance
The number of people wearing red poppies in the run up to Armistice Day on November 11 and Remembrance Sunday has been in decline in recent years.
Scotland's Chief Constable lands taxpayers with £134,000 expenses bill to help pay for her second home
Scotland's Chief Constable Jo Farrell has landed taxpayers with an eye-watering £134,000 bill to help her buy a second home, the Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Named and shamed, the NHS sites failing to hit crucial cancer diagnosis and treatment time targets... so how does YOUR local trust fare?
Under the health service's own rulebook, hospitals are expected to hit three separate targets on catching the disease and starting treatment quickly.
Molly-Mae Hague admits she should have 'waited a few years' before starting a family and feels 'pressure' to give daughter Bambi a sibling
Molly-Mae Hague has admitted she perhaps should have 'waited a few years' before starting a family and now feels 'pressure' to give her daughter Bambi a sibling.
Man, 56, is charged with murder of 'friendly' 62-year-old grandmother after police are called to house disturbance
West Yorkshire Police were called an address in the Woodhouse area of Leeds at 9pm on Thursday November 9.
Victoria Beckham lets her hair down at Holly Ramsay's hen do at Soho Farmhouse - ahead of her lavish Christmas wedding to Adam Peaty
The fashion designer. 51, took to social media to share snaps of her with the bride-to-be as they enjoyed a 'girls night'.
Succession star Sarah Snook's new thriller is the best show of the year - it brings every parent's worst nightmare to life in spectacular fashion and I binged all eight episodes in one sitting
Not only does the plot of All Her Fault hit the ground running in the first 90 seconds, but it evolves into a tale of complex twistiness, insightfulness and unexpected emotional range.
Bombshell Report Exposes How Meta Relied On Scam Ad Profits To Fund AI
"Internal documents have revealed that Meta has projected it earns billions from ignoring scam ads that its platforms then targeted to users most likely to click on them," writes Ars Technica, citing a lengthy report from Reuters.
Reuters reports that Meta "for at least three years failed to identify and stop an avalanche of ads that exposed Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp's billions of users to fraudulent e-commerce and investment schemes, illegal online casinos, and the sale of banned medical products..."
On average, one December 2024 document notes, the company shows its platforms' users an estimated 15 billion "higher risk" scam advertisements — those that show clear signs of being fraudulent — every day. Meta earns about $7 billion in annualized revenue from this category of scam ads each year, another late 2024 document states. Much of the fraud came from marketers acting suspiciously enough to be flagged by Meta's internal warning systems.
But the company only bans advertisers if its automated systems predict the marketers are at least 95% certain to be committing fraud, the documents show. If the company is less certain — but still believes the advertiser is a likely scammer — Meta charges higher ad rates as a penalty, according to the documents. The idea is to dissuade suspect advertisers from placing ads. The documents further note that users who click on scam ads are likely to see more of them because of Meta's ad-personalization system, which tries to deliver ads based on a user's interests... The documents indicate that Meta's own research suggests its products have become a pillar of the global fraud economy. A May 2025 presentation by its safety staff estimated that the company's platforms were involved in a third of all successful scams in the U.S.
Meta also acknowledged in other internal documents that some of its main competitors were doing a better job at weeding out fraud on their platforms... The documents note that Meta plans to try to cut the share of Facebook and Instagram revenue derived from scam ads. In the meantime, Meta has internally acknowledged that regulatory fines for scam ads are certain, and anticipates penalties of up to $1 billion, according to one internal document. But those fines would be much smaller than Meta's revenue from scam ads, a separate document from November 2024 states. Every six months, Meta earns $3.5 billion from just the portion of scam ads that "present higher legal risk," the document says, such as those falsely claiming to represent a consumer brand or public figure or demonstrating other signs of deceit. That figure almost certainly exceeds "the cost of any regulatory settlement involving scam ads...."
A planning document for the first half of 2023 notes that everyone who worked on the team handling advertiser concerns about brand-rights issues had been laid off. The company was also devoting resources so heavily to virtual reality and AI that safety staffers were ordered to restrict their use of Meta's computing resources. They were instructed merely to "keep the lights on...." Meta also was ignoring the vast majority of user reports of scams, a document from 2023 indicates. By that year, safety staffers estimated that Facebook and Instagram users each week were filing about 100,000 valid reports of fraudsters messaging them, the document says. But Meta ignored or incorrectly rejected 96% of them. Meta's safety staff resolved to do better. In the future, the company hoped to dismiss no more than 75% of valid scam reports, according to another 2023 document.
A small advertiser would have to get flagged for promoting financial fraud at least eight times before Meta blocked it, a 2024 document states. Some bigger spenders — known as "High Value Accounts" — could accrue more than 500 strikes without Meta shutting them down, other documents say.
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 for sharing the article.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.