Kira Radinsky is the CEO of Diagnostic Robotics, which uses AI to make predictions that help patients get better healthcare. She’s also the co-founder of Mana.bio which is using AI to automate drug discovery.
On this episode of CRAFTED., Kira will share more on why she believes that, of all the industries that AI will change, it’s those involving chemistry and biology that will change the most. Plus, why she says: “I just want AI to replace me as a scientist.”
Kira shares:
- How Mana.bio is using AI to build new “rocketships” that can deliver drugs to the right planets (cells) — and how they’ve done things in three months that used to take 20 years
- How AI is accelerating drug discovery by creating feedback loops that speed up learning
- How Diagnostic Robotics makes predictions on patient outcomes that help doctors and care teams provide better care
- Why she loves making predictions — Kira is famous for them. Over a decade ago, while getting her PhD and working with Microsoft, she built systems that successfully predicted cholera outbreaks and riots.
- How to incentivize bots to make bolder predictions. i.e. It’s easy to predict that there will not be an earthquake today; it’s harder to say today there will be one.
- Why predictions are only valuable if there’s something you can do to prevent bad outcomes — and why this makes healthcare an ideal field
- How advances in software have enabled her to follow her dream and be a scientist. (Kira doesn’t have the great hands you need to be a lab chemist.)
Key Moments
- (02:29) - Why predictions have been so important to Kira from an early age, and her dream to be a scientist
- (05:46) - How Kira predicts the future and how she became famous for predicting the first cholera outbreak to hit Cuba in more than 100 years
- (09:49) - How Diagnostic Robotics makes predictions that improve healthcare outcomes
- (14:22) - Big unlocks to make better predictions — and explain them to doctors
- (16:42) - What’s “easy” to predict and what’s hard; how to incentivize bots to make bold predictions (e.g. an earthquake)
- (18:49) - Founding Mana.bio and how AI can improve drug discovery
- (24:03) - AI will have a huge impact on the administrative aspects of patient care
- (28:33) - How Mana.bio creates rapid learning feedback loops
- (30:20) - Tips for building with GenAI and why more attention should be paid to causal inference
- (33:18) - Where GenAI will be really transformative in the future
- (35:01) - Outro
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crafted.fmWhat is Future Around & Find Out?
You know what would be awesome? If we could build the future we want — before we muck it up.
Future Around & Find Out helps builders think clearly about AI and emerging technologies, grapple with the implications, and decide what to build next.
Independent technologist and former NPR journalist Dan Blumberg speaks with founders, makers, and you to celebrate breakthroughs, call BS on the hype, explore how things might go sideways — and how we can steer the future in the right direction.
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