The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), the philanthropic vehicle of Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan, was launched ten years ago to advance education, support communities and cure diseases. However, ten years later, the organization’s priorities have changed. What started as a broad social work initiative has been reduced to focus almost entirely on AI and science.
The next chapter of the Foundation will see it go “all in AI-powered biology,” Zuckerberg and Chan said in a joint letter yesterday (November 6). Going forward, its Philanthropic efforts will expand into a network of research centers called BioHub, which will use AI to help and manage diseases.
The departure is a marked departure from the original CZI mission. When Zuckerberg and Chan founded the initiative in 2015, they pledged to donate their fortune—now estimated at $207 billion—to blood causes. Over the years, $7 billion in dedicated grants have supported efforts ranging from immigration reform to criminal justice reform.
The renaissance of Science and AI has been going on for months. In February, CZI rolled back its diversity, equality and Dei) initiatives and began prioritizing AI and science in social consent. In April, it closed a school for low-income families in East Palo Alto that CZI helped create. And the following month, it ended funding for several California Housing associations.
“We tried a bunch of things,” said Chan, a medical student at the University of California, San Francisco, speaking of Recent space podcast yesterday. “Ten years ago, I thought we were getting a sense of what it’s like that allows us to have an impact,” adds Ayi and biology. “
CZI’s Pivot Shows a Wider Meta Emergence, which also undercuts dei’s efforts and anchors its long-term goals of finding supertintalligence, or AI systems that surpass human capabilities.
What’s next for CZI?
CZI’s BioHub network will now focus on four scientific challenges. In addition to developing an AI model that can predict and understand how human cells behave, this law aims to create thinking systems that visualize natural processes, and use new technologies to better diagnose and treat diseases.
To support these efforts, CZI is stepping up with more computing power and talent. Its compute capacity will increase to 10,000 processing units (GPUS) by 2028, according to Zuckerberg and Chan. The foundation is also teaming up with Evolutionalscale, an AI research lab specialized in life sciences. Alex Rive, Alex’s principal scientist, will join CZI to oversee research programs in AI, data and experimental biology.
CZI’s Push in ai-arveven science science with a broad range of technologies to accelerate research on AI at the beginning of the year, ai pioneer Yoshua Bengio presented the “aintist ai” program designed to generate hypotheses and help with research. Jeff Bezos and Eric Schmidt have invested in labs from time to time, the first building models of AI that can replace the scientific methods of science like experiments and simulations.
Zuckerberg said that CZI’s ambitious goal of curing all diseases will accelerate how quickly AI Technology advances. Speaking to Recent spacedescribed the rise of AI as a key force behind CZI’s restructuring. “There’s a lot of work we’re very proud of being a part of, including work in education and supporting communities,” Zuckerberg said. “But when we think about it, we feel like the work we’ve done at Science has really been impactful and, in many ways, accelerating.”
