Hybrid Vigor: The Intersection of Genetics and Artificial Intelligence
Why I’m Studying Some Of Our Most Dangerous Superpowers
The worlds of genetics and machine learning are both in the midst of their own Cambrian Explosions. If you have been living under a rock, you might not have noticed. From gene drives to “The Singularity”, these two fields have made waves in science and technology headlines for good reasons; these fields give humanity a small taste of what it’s like to play god. Both of these fields have seen remarkable advances in the 2010’s and the pace of research is continuing to pick up speed as we approach the 2020’s.
With genetic engineering, we can reprogram the basic building blocks of life. As we become more and more adept at manipulating genes and genomes, we may eventually have the power to create entirely new forms of life that have never existed before. On the other side, AI researchers are working towards an “artificial general intelligence”, a computer than can think and reason about the world in general, on its own. While current machine learning systems are narrow AI’s, the speed of advances has outpaced even the most optimistic predictions. Scientists and researchers have even discovered that a popular kind of machine learning algorithm — neural networks — have an unanticipated degree of generality.
