Decoding Our DNA: How AI Supercharges Medical Breakthroughs and Biological Threats with Kevin Esvelt

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4.8 • 1.5K Ratings

🗓️ 18 July 2024

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

AI has been a powerful accelerant for biological research, rapidly opening up new frontiers in medicine and public health. But that progress can also make it easier for bad actors to manufacture new biological threats. In this episode, Tristan and Daniel sit down with biologist Kevin Esvelt to discuss why AI has been such a boon for biologists and how we can safeguard society against the threats that AIxBio poses.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Tristan.
0:05.0	And this is Daniel.
0:07.0	When you strip down all life on Earth to its most essential parts,
0:10.0	it's a language.
0:12.0	A language with four characters, A, G, C, and T. These are the four base pairs that make up every strand of DNA. And all of biology is fundamentally controlled by this language.
0:25.4	Even though it wasn't until 2022 that we sequenced the complete human genome,
0:29.7	we're still in the relative infancy of understanding how this language works,
0:34.0	and interacting with it is like pouring over ancient hieroglyphics.
0:38.0	But now we have a Rosetta Stone,
0:40.0	a key that can translate those hieroglyphics for us.
0:42.8	And that is AI.
0:44.0	We've seen so much in the news about how AI has been able to ingest the language of
0:48.0	human interaction and create chatbots,
0:50.2	or ingest the language of coding and create GitHub co-pilot.
0:53.2	But what gets less attention is that AI is also able to understand the language of our DNA.
0:58.6	And understanding our DNA means that we can go from creating powerful language machines to powerful biology machines.
1:05.0	Researchers have been able to use AI to model thousands of molecules and proteins in seconds to develop
1:09.7	promising new drug candidates. But these advancements are a double-edged sword. The same
1:14.9	technology that enables rapid drug development can also allow bad actors to
1:19.7	rewrite the language of biology for malicious purposes. AI is rapidly opening up new
1:24.4	frontiers in biology that sound like science fiction, but they're not. And we need to
1:29.0	take these advancements seriously. That's why I'm so excited to have Kevin Sveld on this episode.
	...

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