OpenAI · MIT Technology Review
AI models need more data about biology, and OpenAI is paying to create it
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Last year Ruxandra Teslo, a policy analyst who focuses on clinical trials, posted an idea for supercharging medical AI systems: Use data from failed biotech companies.
Key facts
- Its largest single gift so far, of $100 million, was awarded in August to the Common Health Coalition, an organization that helps patients
- Teslo’s idea for a biotech archive received $500,000 and will be pursued by 1Day Sooner, an advocacy group representing clinical trial volunteers, which she advises
- OpenAI started as a nonprofit, but leader Sam Altman restructured it to form a for-profit corporation that develops new models, launches products, and is now planning an initial public offering
- The $500,000 grant to 1Day Sooner will help the group prove it can obtain the data troves of bankrupt companies, says the organization’s president and cofounder, Josh Morrison
Summary
By bidding at their bankruptcy proceedings, she proposed, it might be possible to obtain detailed regulatory filings, manufacturing strategies, and safety data—types of information usually considered trade secrets. Today the OpenAI Foundation, the nonprofit parent of OpenAI, said it would fund her idea as part of a new effort it calls Public Data for Health, which aims to help artificial intelligence make big leaps in medicine by paying to create “high-quality scientific datasets.” The basic idea is that AI isn’t going to be capable of making important breakthroughs in curing disease unless researchers can feed the models much more information than they have so far.