The first AI Neural Network for Genetic Data is live (June 2023) and was trained on a massive amount of primate species with the goal of being able to decode mutations in humans. It's called PrimateAI-3D and is released by Illumina, a company that controls 90% of the worlds sequencing equipment. This along with CRISPR will likely allow us to soon be able to modify life in whatever way we want. What does this mean for the world?
________
So, last week there was a huge bit of news that seems to be somewhat underplayed by the media, but there is a flurry of activity from billionaire investors.
So there is this giant Genomic Sequencing company called Illumina.
It's in San Diego, but something like 90% of the world's genomic sequencing is done on Illumina's equipment.
They just announced launching their own AI (a neural networks similar to Google's AlphaFold2 or even ChatGPT).
Here is a video that explains how Google's AlphaFold2 directly led to Illumina launching this AI and what is likely to happen next:
https://youtu.be/T8as0Qd1MRk
There are massive implications to this.
Basically genomics and DNA is this massive pool of data that we don't understand because we have to way of sorting this large amounts of data to gain important insights.
Then somewhere around 2017 there were a few large breakthroughs in AI tech. That's why we are seeing all these new things like ChatGPT, MidJourney, Stable Diffusion and Google's AlphaFold2 etc.
Now that technology is getting applied to sifting through all the massive DNA data we have.
This plus technology like CRISPR, which is able to modify DNA by cutting and injecting new DNA sequences.
So, right now we can write/edit the code that all life runs on and with Neural Networks and Genomics we should be able to learn what each bit of code means.
So once we are able to do that, genetic engineering will become very effective and simple, genetic advancements accelerate exponentially.
(by the way all the legendary billionaire investors have already sniffed this out, Peter Thiel, Carl Icahn and Stanley Drukenmiller are all either buying up Illumina or trying to launch competing products)
Some of the things that will be possible:
1)human genetic engineering - change eye color, height, muscle, intelligence etc. Basically you can design humans like you can video game characters. Whether this will only be possible for embryos or we will be actually to modify adults is not apparent yet, but most disease will be gone and most people will likely have close to "perfect genes" in terms on not being sick, not having any weaknesses etc.
2) bacteria for everything - right now we know it's possible to have bacteria eat plastics, other bacteria to produce biofuel. We just can't do it at scale, it's very difficult. With genetic engineering this could accelerate allowing us to clean up oceans, clean the air from CO2 etc. (this was suggested by researchers at Google's DeepMind, they said it *might* be possible with advancements in this tech)
3) recreate extinct species - This sounds like... Jurassic Park? But in a good way hopefully.
And tons of things that we can't even image. Basically DNA codes everything that life is able to do, so there isnt' really a limit to what we can do if we are able to understand how it works.
I'm curious what people think about this?
This seems like massive, massive news...
Most people interested in AI are looking at Google, NVIDIA, OpenAI etc.
But AI neural networks in Bio-Tech seem like where the biggest applications of this tech will be seen.
Are we about to experience a massive Bio-Tech revolution driven by AI neural networks?