One of the most common defenses techbros give of AI is to point to AlphaFold and wax lyrical about how the positive impacts for society will only grow exponentially from there.

Until now I would shrug and think “well, sure, if it helps for protein folding than railing against that isn’t the point.”

Now? Every single damn time someone uses that rationale I will respond back with this article, because either Google realized it’s AlphaFold AI wasn’t actually that useful or Google never actually cared about anything deeper here than a superficial temporary marketing boost for their advertisement products.