News — At The Edge — 12/30
One small set of future issues this week — new AI generation, new gene editing, new synthetic meat and new type of beauty — that illustrate how fast technology is evolving.
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Can Google’s AI Make Better AI Than the Googlers? —
“Google’s AutoML system recently produced…machine-learning codes with higher rates of efficiency than those made by the researchers….
AutoML was developed as a solution to the lack of top-notch talent in AI programming…so the team came up with a machine learning software that can create self-learning code.
The system runs thousands of simulations to determine which areas of the code can be improved, makes the changes, and continues the process ad infinitum, or until its goal is reached…[and] can do in hours what takes the best human programmers weeks or months. Even scarier, AutoML is better… than the researchers who made it.
In an image recognition task it reached record a high 82 percent accuracy….[I]ts self-created code…can mark multiple points within an image with 42 percent accuracy compared to human-made software’s 39….
[W]e’re not on the verge of…(self-aware machines), but we are leaps closer to revealing AI’s potential to accelerate the technology timeline. Google only announced AutoML five months ago….
Tomorrow’s machines won’t just learn, they’ll self-update and be capable of creating custom programs.” https://hackernoon.com/can-googles-ai-make-better-ai-than-the-googlers-947bd1464248
Crispr Isn’t Enough Any More. Get Ready for Gene Editing 2.0 —
“[For] five years, the gene-editing technology known as Crispr has revolutionized the face and pace of modern biology…to create better models of disease…[and] commercialize new drugs, therapies, foods, chemicals, and materials…[doing] for biology and medicine what the Model T did for…transportation; democratizing access to a revolutionary technology and disrupting the status quo….
Crispr has already been used to treat cancer in humans, and it could…cure genetic diseases like sickle cell anemia and beta thalassemia…[but] is somewhat clunky, unreliable, and a bit dangerous….[Now] gene-editing 2.0 is here….
One approach is to mutate the Cas9 enzyme so…its scissors don’t work. Then other proteins — like ones that activate gene expression — can be combined…letting them toggle genes on and off (sometimes with light or chemical signals) without altering the DNA sequence. This kind of ‘epigenetic editing’ could be used to tackle conditions that arise from a constellation of genetic factors, as opposed to the straightforward single mutation-based disorders….
[Others] designed a brand-new enzyme…not found in nature [to]…chemically convert an A-T nucleotide pairing to a G-C one…[for] about half of the 32,000 known pathogenic point mutations in humans could be fixed by that single swap….
Crispr evolved in bacteria as a primitive defense mechanism…[for] viral DNA and cut it up until there was none left. It’s all accelerator, no brake, and that can make it dangerous…. So far, researchers have identified 21 unique families of naturally occurring anti-Crispr proteins — small molecules that turn off the gene-editor. But they only know how a handful of them work….
[T]hese will be crucial for…gene drives — a gene-editing technology that quickly spreads a desired modification through a population…to nudge evolution one way or the other [as]…a powerful tool for combating everything from disease to climate change…[to] wiping out malaria-causing mosquitoes, and eradicating harmful invasive species.
But out in the wild, they have the potential to spread out of control…[because] it’s a lot harder to know where those orders get delivered, and how they get translated (or mistranslated) along the way….
[M]any more years of work for this generation of gene-editors to find their way…into human patients…vegetables, and disease-carrying pests. That is, if gene-editing 3.0 doesn’t make them all obsolete first.” https://www.wired.com/story/whats-next-for-crispr/
Lab-Grown Meat Is On the Way —
“[NASA] led the way to…technology to create ‘clean meat’…milk, eggs and leather…[needing] fewer resources to produce than raising whole animals…[and] contributes more greenhouse gas emissions [more] than all forms of transportation combined….
’The reality is that it takes massive amounts of land, water, fertilizer, oil and other resources to produce meat’….[Lab-meat] takes a miniscule biopsy of skeletal muscle (the kind of meat we eat today), isolate some [cells]…and start culturing them….(The process of growing certain liquid animal products like milk and egg whites is…much easier.)….
[Currently] companies are producing only ground meat… [but] expect to commercialize their products within years….[Having] eaten their clean beef, fish, duck, liver, yogurt and more…they taste great…[and] more sustainable and humane [with]…far fewer food safety problems…like E. coli that plague meat production today….
[Many] thousands of years ago, humans began selectively breeding animals and planting seeds…[now] taking that control down to the cellular level…[so] one single cell of a cow…could feed an entire village, offering real hope that we may be able to satiate humanity’s demand for meat without destroying our planet in the process….
Plant-based meats are fantastic…[while] clean meat is another…alternative to the factory farming of animals…while lightening our footprint on the planet.” https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/lab-grown-meat-is-on-the-way/
The Ugly Business of Beauty Apps (4 min. video)
“You don’t have to get digital plastic surgery in order to be a person online, but there are a lot of companies that strongly suggest that you do…[and] these products have a really particular idea about how we’re supposed to look: super white, hyper feminine and creepily youthful.”
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May you live long and prosper!
Doc Huston
