Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: biological

What happens when you have Deep Learning begin to generate your designs? The commons misconception would be that a machine’s design would look ‘mechanical’ or ‘logical’. However, what we seem to be finding is that they look very organic, in fact they look organic or like an alien biology. Take a look at some of these fascinating designs.

The photo above design is described as follows:

“This is not only an exciting development for the construction sector, but many other industries as well. In the case of this particular piece, the height is approximately half that of one designed for traditional production methods, while the direct weight reduction per node is 75%. On a construction project that means we could be looking at an overall weight reduction of the total structure of more than 40%. But the really exciting part is that this technique can potentially be applied to any industry that uses complex, high quality, metal products.”

Read more

In Brief

  • Peter Diamandis, founder and chairman of the XPRIZE Foundation, thinks the human species is headed for an evolutionary transformation.
  • The evolution of life has slowly unfolded over 3.5 billion years; but its pace has rapidly increased in recent years. Diamandis believes this heralds the next, exciting stages of human evolution.

In the next 30 years, humanity is in for a transformation the likes of which we’ve never seen before—and XPRIZE Foundation founder and chairman Peter Diamandis believes that this will give birth to a new species. Diamandis admits that this might sound too far out there for most people. He is convinced, however, that we are evolving towards what he calls “meta-intelligence,” and today’s exponential rate of growth is one clear indication.

In an essay for Singularity Hub, Diamandis outlines the transformative stages in the multi-billion year pageant of evolution, and takes note of what the recent increasing “temperature” of evolution—a consequence of human activity—may mean for the future. The story, in a nutshell, is this—early prokaryotic life appears about 3.5 billion years ago (bya), representing perhaps a symbiosis of separate metabolic and replicative mechanisms of “life;” at 2.5 bya, eukaryotes emerge as composite organisms incorporating biological “technology” (other living things) within themselves; at 1.5 bya, multicellular metazoans appear as eukaryotes are yoked together in cooperative colonies; and at 400 million years ago, vertebrate fish species emerge onto land to begin life’s adventure beyond the seas.

Read more

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLr7E2Ms4Y4

“I’m a political theory researcher at Sciences Po, and this talk draws on modern political theories of liberalism, the latest transhumanist literature, and ancient Greek theories of the good life.”

The Transhumanist Paradox.

Deciding between technological utopias in a liberal state.

How does a pluralist society – a society built to accommodate our irreconcilable differences – make a choice about the technological future of mankind? How can a liberal state dedicated to upholding individual liberty interfere in technological progress, and why should it?

Do we really want to leave our technological futures in the hands of the major AI researchers – Google, Facebook, and the US Defense Department?

I argue that our political system is designed not to deal with the questions raised by the transhumanist movement, and that without a major overhaul of political liberalism, technological progress will escape democratic oversight.

For the first time in history we have the ability to choose what it means to be human, and yet our liberal pluralist societies preclude substantive debate about our collective future. Modern liberal states are based upon the assumption that there is no single best way to live, and that for the state to endorse a substantive vision of the good life is to open the door to totalitarianism. On matters of personal conviction – human nature, our place in the cosmos, and our ultimate goals – liberal states want us to agree to disagree.

However, we cannot simply agree to disagree about transhumanism because our individual choices will affect the entire species. If you decide to upload your brain onto a computer and abandon your biological body, you are choosing what is essential to humanity: you are defining human nature. If, on the other hand, the government bans technological enhancement, it is also imposing a vision of humanity. Thus, only once liberalism abandons the pretense of neutrality can we start imagining alternative technological futures and debating the underlying vision of the good life that will orient our choice.

Read more

Nice article raising old concerns and debates on ethics. Synbio like any technology or science can in the wrong hands be used to do anything destructive. Placing standards and laws on such technologies truly does get the law abiding researchers, labs and companies aligned and sadly restricted. However, it does not prevent an ISIS, or the black market, or any other criminal with money from trying to meet an intended goal. So, I do caution folks to at least step back assess and think before imposing a bunch of restrictions and laws on a technology that prevents it from helping those in need v. criminals who never follow ethics or the law.

When artists use synthetic biology, are they playing God, or just playing with cool new toys? Scientists Drew Endy and Christina Agapakis weigh in on the ethics.

Read more

Constructing gene circuits that satisfy quantitative performance criteria has been a long‐standing challenge in synthetic biology. Here, we show a strategy for optimizing a complex three‐gene circuit, a novel proportional miRNA biosensor, using predictive modeling to initiate a search in the phase space of sensor genetic composition. We generate a library of sensor circuits using diverse genetic building blocks in order to access favorable parameter combinations and uncover specific genetic compositions with greatly improved dynamic range. The combination of high‐throughput screening data and the data obtained from detailed mechanistic interrogation of a small number of sensors was used to validate the model. The validated model facilitated further experimentation, including biosensor reprogramming and biosensor integration into larger networks, enabling in principle arbitrary logic with miRNA inputs using normal form circuits. The study reveals how model‐guided generation of genetic diversity followed by screening and model validation can be successfully applied to optimize performance of complex gene networks without extensive prior knowledge.

Read more

Nice; using gene regulatory protein from yeast as a method for reducing the work required for making cell-specific perturbations.

The human brain, the most complex object in the universe, has 86 billion neurons with trillions of yet-unmapped connections. Understanding how it generates behavior is a problem that has beguiled humankind for millennia, and is critical for developing effective therapies for the psychiatric disorders that incur heavy costs on individuals and on society. The roundworm C elegans, measuring a mere 1 millimeter, is a powerful model system for understanding how nervous systems produce behaviors. Unlike the human brain, it has only 302 neurons, and has completely mapped neural wiring of 6,000 connections, making it the closest thing to a computer circuit board in biology. Despite its relative simplicity, the roundworm exhibits behaviors ranging from simple reflexes to the more complex, such as searching for food when hungry, learning to avoid food that previously made it ill, and social behavior.

Understanding how this dramatically simpler nervous system works will give insights into how our vastly more complex brains function and is the subject of a paper published on December 26, 2016, in Nature Methods.

Read more

In Brief

  • An expert on the intersection of science and philosophy posits that our current transition to “postbiological” life could have already been undertaken by extraterrestrial species.
  • She warns that these alien lifeforms could by artificially intelligent, in which case they could pose a tremendous threat to life on Earth.

Susan Schneider is a fellow at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies (IEET). She is also an associate professor of philosophy at the University of Connecticut, and her expertise includes the philosophy of cognitive science, particularly with regards to the plausibility of computational theories of mind and theoretical issues in artificial intelligence (AI).

In short, Schneider has a keen understanding of the intersection between science and philosophy. As such, she also has a unique perspective on AI, offering a fresh (but quite alarming) view on how artificial intelligence could forever alter humanity’s existence. In an article published by the IEET, she shares that perspective, talking about potential flaws in the way we view AI and suggesting a possible connection between AI and extraterrestrial life.

Read more

Michigan State University scientists have engineered “molecular Velcro” into to cyanobacteria, boosting this microalgae’s biofuel viability as well as its potential for other research.

The findings, featured in the current issue of ACS Synthetic Biology, show how MSU researchers have designed a surface display system to attach cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, to yeast and other surfaces. The proof-of-concept may improve the efficiency of harvesting algae as well as open avenues to improve the construction of artificial microbial communities for sustainable biofuel production or other industrial projects.

“Inadequate cyanobacterial toolkits limited our ability to come up with biological solutions,” said Derek Fedeson, MSU graduate student and the study’s co-lead author. “So, we wanted to add another tool to the toolbox to expand the capacity of these bacteria, which can harness solar energy for the production of useful compounds.”

Read more