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Mark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan: How AI Will Cure All Disease

Overview

Shownote

Highlights

Transcript

Chapters

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Mark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan: How AI Will Cure All Disease

a16z Podcast

Nov 06
a16z Podcast

a16z Podcast

Nov 06
OverviewShownoteHighlightsTranscriptChaptersPins

Shownote

Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg join a16z’s Ben Horowitz, Erik Torenberg, and Vineeta Agarwala to share how the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative is building the computational tools that will accelerate the cure, prevention, and management of all disease by ce...

Highlights

Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg join a16z leaders to discuss a bold scientific vision: leveraging AI and long-term investment to transform how we understand and treat disease. Their conversation centers on reimagining the infrastructure of biological research, not through incremental improvements, but by building foundational tools that redefine what’s possible in medicine.
05:56
AI is both overestimated and underestimated, similar to the early internet
07:21
Few have combined frontier biology with frontier AI, creating an opportunity for transformative science.
09:05
The 10-15 year horizon is concrete and achievable for solving grand challenges
09:43
Integration of LLMs and AI has become an interesting development for data use
11:24
Large language models are prompting new questions about therapeutic outcomes.
11:35
Most diseases should be thought of as rare due to individual biological differences
13:38
Biology lacks a 'periodic table of elements' equivalent in 2025
15:47
75% of the Cell Atlas data comes from the broader scientific community.
19:31
Researchers from Meta join the Biohub to advance protein folding models
21:18
Virtual cell models allow scientists to test riskier drug development ideas with lower costs and higher efficiency.
21:56
Even imperfect virtual cell models can de-risk experimental hypotheses
28:19
CZI can uniquely tie together Frontier AI and Frontier biology
30:32
Closing the loop between data generation and AI modeling drives breakthroughs in cell biology
33:37
User interfaces are designed to allow broad participation in scientific problem-solving
38:23
The Biohub has enabled academic labs to access large-scale compute resources they couldn't otherwise afford.
40:41
AI can bring huge leverage to the pipeline from basic science to novel therapies and public health.

Chapters

Advancing Science to Cure All Diseases
00:00
Building tools to accelerate scientific discovery
04:17
The credible path to funding basic science
05:47
Biohub = Frontier Biology + Frontier AI
07:21
Challenges building on a 10-15 year timeline
09:05
How CZI chooses what to work on
09:43
Making sense of science with LLMs
11:15
Measuring success in the therapeutic realm
11:31
“Most diseases should be thought of as rare diseases”
13:32
Inspiration: building a periodic table for biology
15:39
Why virtual cells?
19:27
The Biohub Master Plan
21:17
How virtual cell models allow more risk taking
21:51
Bringing CZI & Biohub together
28:15
Why Biohub matters
30:32
The importance of interface design in democratizing scientific discovery
33:36
How Biohub encourages cross-functional collaboration
35:34
Looking ahead: the broader impact of AI on biotech
40:38

Transcript

Mark Zuckerberg: This is a space that, I mean, there's just going to be a huge amount of leverage with AI. It still seems like there could be a lot more effort in this space around building tools. And it's kind of this crazy thing that we're, you know, her...