AI models need more data about biology, and OpenAI is paying to create it
AI models need more data about biology, and OpenAI is paying to create it
AI 模型需要更多生物学数据，OpenAI 正斥资进行创造
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. 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. She called these documents “biotech’s lost archive” and said they could be used to help train AIs that would act as powerful copilots in the often opaque drug approval process. 去年，专注于临床试验的政策分析师 Ruxandra Teslo 提出了一个增强医疗 AI 系统的构想：利用破产生物技术公司的数据。她建议，通过在这些公司的破产程序中进行竞标，或许能够获取详细的监管文件、制造策略和安全数据——这些信息通常被视为商业机密。她将这些文件称为“生物技术的失落档案”，并表示它们可以用来训练 AI，使其在往往不透明的药物审批过程中充当强大的副驾驶。
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. “Everyone is recognizing that data is the biggest bottleneck in successfully applying AI to biology,” says Morgan Levine, a former vice president for computation at Altos Labs, a longevity company. 今天，作为 OpenAI 非营利性母公司的 OpenAI 基金会宣布，将资助她的这一构想，作为其名为“公共健康数据”（Public Data for Health）新计划的一部分。该计划旨在通过出资创建“高质量科学数据集”，帮助人工智能在医学领域实现重大飞跃。其核心理念是：除非研究人员能向模型输入比目前多得多的信息，否则 AI 将无法在治愈疾病方面取得重大突破。长寿公司 Altos Labs 前计算副总裁 Morgan Levine 表示：“每个人都意识到，数据是成功将 AI 应用于生物学的最大瓶颈。”
In its initial round of data grants, the OpenAI Foundation also announced that it would give $40 million to a program to collect data about novel cancer vaccines at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and support OpenAdmet, a group that runs competitions in which researchers try to predict drug effects. 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. “We expect many remaining breakthroughs in preventing and curing disease to come from pairing the intelligence of new models with more observations of the world—in other words, more data,” the OpenAI Foundation said in a statement. 在首轮数据资助中，OpenAI 基金会还宣布将向北卡罗来纳大学教堂山分校的一个项目提供 4000 万美元，用于收集有关新型癌症疫苗的数据，并支持 OpenAdmet——一个组织竞赛让研究人员预测药物效果的团体。Teslo 关于生物技术档案的构想获得了 50 万美元资助，并将由她担任顾问的临床试验志愿者倡导组织 1Day Sooner 负责执行。OpenAI 基金会在一份声明中表示：“我们预计，预防和治愈疾病的许多剩余突破，将来自将新模型的智能与对世界更多的观察相结合——换句话说，就是更多的数据。”
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 of stock that could value it at $1 trillion. Because the foundation holds a 26% equity stake in OpenAI, it is now be on track to become the richest charitable organization on the planet, potentially sitting on $250 billion in stock value. (By comparison, the Gates Foundation and a trust associated with it held about $180 billion at the end of 2025.) OpenAI 最初是一家非营利组织，但领导者 Sam Altman 对其进行了重组，成立了一家营利性公司，负责开发新模型、发布产品，目前正计划进行首次公开募股（IPO），估值可能达到 1 万亿美元。由于该基金会持有 OpenAI 26% 的股权，它现在有望成为全球最富有的慈善组织，潜在股票价值高达 2500 亿美元。（相比之下，盖茨基金会及其相关信托基金在 2025 年底持有的资产约为 1800 亿美元。）
Making good use of that kind of money will not be easy. The foundation, based in San Francisco, is still hiring for many key roles and started ramping up its grantmaking only this year. Its largest single gift so far, of $100 million, was awarded in August to the Common Health Coalition, an organization that helps patients get access to drugs for hepatitis C. 善用这笔资金并非易事。这家总部位于旧金山的基金会仍在招聘许多关键职位，并且直到今年才开始加大资助规模。其迄今为止最大的一笔捐赠为 1 亿美元，于 8 月授予了 Common Health Coalition，这是一个帮助患者获取丙型肝炎药物的组织。
OpenAI’s charitable efforts come even as apocalyptic fears have broken out about the possibility that runaway AI could wipe out all human life, possibly by launching a deadly bioweapon. Those fears have been stoked by AI company insiders, some of whom say the chance of human extinction within the next decade is 10% or more. Last week, Altman and xAI founder Elon Musk both endorsed a call by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei to “slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models” so that risk prevention can catch up. OpenAI 的慈善努力是在人们对失控 AI 可能通过制造致命生物武器消灭全人类的末日恐惧中进行的。这些恐惧被 AI 公司内部人士所煽动，其中一些人声称未来十年内人类灭绝的可能性为 10% 或更高。上周，Altman 和 xAI 创始人埃隆·马斯克（Elon Musk）都支持了 Anthropic 首席执行官 Dario Amodei 的呼吁，即“放慢我们提升 AI 模型能力的速度”，以便风险预防措施能够跟上。
Jacob Trefethen, an executive at the foundation, says it essentially operates separately from OpenAI but shares an official mission of ensuring that artificial intelligence “benefits all of humanity.” “We’re starting grantmaking when we think the best way to achieve that mission is to make grants to external nonprofits, research institutions, and other third parties,” Trefethen said in an interview. He says the foundation hopes to give away $1 billion by the end of the year. 基金会高管 Jacob Trefethen 表示，该基金会本质上独立于 OpenAI 运作，但拥有共同的官方使命，即确保人工智能“造福全人类”。Trefethen 在接受采访时说：“我们开始进行资助，是因为我们认为实现这一使命的最佳方式是向外部非营利组织、研究机构和其他第三方提供资助。”他表示，基金会希望在今年年底前发放 10 亿美元。
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. He thinks nonexclusive copies of company datasets could be acquired for only “a few tens of thousands of dollars” each. His organization is currently in possession of three datasets, two of them donated by Lumen Bioscience, a biotech that previously used the Chapter 11 strategy to gain insights into another company’s drug development efforts. Morrison says two other attempts to obtain drug company files this year proved unsuccessful, after 1Day Sooner’s bids were not accepted. 1Day Sooner 的总裁兼联合创始人 Josh Morrison 表示，这 50 万美元的资助将帮助该组织证明其能够获取破产公司的数据宝库。他认为，每份公司数据集的非独家副本仅需“几万美元”即可获得。他的组织目前拥有三个数据集，其中两个由生物技术公司 Lumen Bioscience 捐赠，该公司此前曾利用破产保护策略（Chapter 11）来深入了解另一家公司的药物开发工作。Morrison 表示，今年另外两次获取制药公司文件的尝试均未成功，因为 1Day Sooner 的竞标未被接受。
Bankruptcies could become what some are calling a “new land grab” for AI training. Last month, Google won a bid to take over the corporate data of the failed carrier Spirit Airlines, including 100 million emails. That led to objections from flight attendants and others who worried that private or proprietary data could be exposed. 破产案可能成为一些人所称的 AI 训练的“新圈地运动”。上个月，谷歌赢得了接管破产航空公司精神航空（Spirit Airlines）企业数据的竞标，其中包括 1 亿封电子邮件。这引发了空乘人员和其他人的反对，他们担心私人或专有数据可能会被泄露。
The drug company files that 1Day Sooner is seeking are known as common technical documents. They typically contain the back-and-forth between companies and regulators, as well as detailed scientific and medical measurements, and essentially provide everything that is known about a drug. According to Teslo, who is a writer for Works In Progress and a nonresident fellow at the Institute for Progress, a think tank in Washington, DC, a stockpile of such files could help turn an AI into a regulatory expert, which in her view could be one of the main ways AI helps speed cures to market. 1Day Sooner 寻求的制药公司文件被称为“通用技术文件”（Common Technical Documents）。它们通常包含公司与监管机构之间的往来沟通，以及详细的科学和医学测量数据，本质上提供了关于某种药物的所有已知信息。Teslo 是《Works In Progress》的撰稿人，也是华盛顿特区智库“进步研究所”（Institute for Progress）的非常驻研究员。她认为，积累此类文件可以帮助将 AI 转化为监管专家，这在她看来可能是 AI 帮助加速药物上市的主要途径之一。
“People say ‘We will invent AI, and AI will cure cancer,’ but that’s very removed from the messy reality and the regulatory process,” she says. “About 70% of the money and time in drug development is spent in clinical development—organizing the trials and testing the drug—but despite that, the process is basically a black box, especially for small biotech companies generating the innovations.” “人们常说‘我们将发明 AI，AI 将治愈癌症’，但这与混乱的现实和监管流程相去甚远，”她说。“药物开发中约 70% 的资金和时间都花在临床开发上——组织试验和测试药物——但尽管如此，这个过程基本上是一个黑箱，尤其是对于产生创新的小型生物技术公司而言。”