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Aphrozen t1_j64j5zj wrote

Anyone saying they were born in the wrong generation are so wrong. This is the time where things get interesting

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FibroBitch96 t1_j64mfre wrote

“May you live in interesting times” is very much a curse

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Aphrozen t1_j64mnjq wrote

But in a world where we are too old to discover the world and too young to discover the stars, we were at real risk of being an era of complacency. At least here we have a chance to make our existence worthwhile

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Trindler t1_j66huty wrote

Unless everything collapses, which is still a real possibility if we can't get climate change under control or nukes begin flying, idk if there will ever be another Era of complacency given how things are going. It's wild too, because in ancient history literally most of it was complacency, and now there's groundbreaking tech almost every week

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Aphrozen t1_j67r1xi wrote

I’m sure they thought the end of the world was going to occur during the Plague, and still they prevailed. The story will continue constantly as long as humans exist and we’re pretty damn resilient

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Darryl_Lict t1_j66dqxl wrote

I'm an old fart, and I feel like there's a reasonably good chance that I'll be able to orbit the planet for an amount within striking distance.

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Cpt_Ohu t1_j67ft6l wrote

Our species probably won't discover the stars in the way you imagine. Our existence is already made worthwhile, from the perspective of having an impact. We poisoned our environment and killed almost all wildlife while using up millions of years of compressed sun energy within a few centuries. Unless we somehow find another source of energy on the same magnitude, our technologically prepped up society won't even make it through the next 200 years. Never mind making it off this planet.

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tritikar t1_j67kqok wrote

Lol, if you think that the collapse of our modern civilisation will be because we run out of energy you are sadly mistaken. There are plenty of ways we might see the collapse of modern society and civilisation. Running out of energy isn't one of them. We will NEVER run out of energy!! Not unless we are such a successful species that we colonies the galaxy and beyond and survive to witness the heat death of the universe, and even then it won't be homosapiens who run out of energy. But some distant descendant species.

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Cpt_Ohu t1_j67ljh7 wrote

You seem to be misunderstanding. We will not run out of energy. We will run out of cheap energy with high returns. That's what matters.

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tritikar t1_j680x7m wrote

No we won't. I mean temporarily sure the cost of energy will increase until it reaches a point that it makes the expenditure required to develop the infrastructure for other erergy options economically viable.

After that, near limitless energy that is far cheaper to generate than the current paradigm.

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tritikar t1_j682hbm wrote

Also I think you have misunderstood me.

I don't mean run out of energy as in "have zero energy available to us". Of course I realise that's not what you meant. I mean run out of energy as in "no longer have enough energy to maintain our current level of modern civilisation". Which correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that's what you are suggesting will happen to us within the next 200 years?

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willowhawk t1_j680ipy wrote

Too old to discover the world, too young to discover the stars but the right age to discover AI.

I’d say that is pretty exciting, for now.

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SkySweeper656 t1_j65l969 wrote

This is an avenue id rather not explore.

The idea of a computer injecting me with something it created itself is horrifying and Id rather die on my own terms than possibly be killed on an extinction-level deary injection.

Both end with death but at least one doesnt have me witnessing the fall of mankind to an injection by killer AI.

Yes ive seen a lot of scifi movies lmao

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Aphrozen t1_j65lg2s wrote

That’s why we let the Guinea pigs go first lol

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SkySweeper656 t1_j65m9h6 wrote

Who's to say it's not a long-term release thing? Or is designed to only kill human biology? Or even worse, its designed to react to a signal that, if activated, kills the host. And we all carry around tiny transmitters in our pockets these days.

AI is the end of humanity, in one way or another. We already have it generating music for us and creating art for us with seemingly no effort to us. Now we have it creating our cures?

Humanity is doomed.

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Aphrozen t1_j65mlun wrote

I’m sure they said the same thing about the internet— hell, I think when the nuke was invented. But we adapt and overcome as we always will. Besides, we really aren’t important enough for that level of interest. Vast majority of the world do basic jobs, go home, drink, watch tv, and sleep. Nothing of importance worth controlling

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SkySweeper656 t1_j65nq3p wrote

This is different though. This is talking about creating something that thinks

That is no longer a tool or a weapon. That is something sentient to me.

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Aphrozen t1_j65nzwg wrote

Then I guess we better adapt or die as a species— AI is inevitable, just up to us to be ready for the better or worse of its fallouts

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DaREALHwangster t1_j67o1jk wrote

In the next episode. Are the human race going to unite as one to over come the hardship and challenges that they face? Or are they going to keep fighting over profit/resources ruining the planet eventually? Stay tuned.

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Darryl_Lict t1_j66ddb8 wrote

Technological advances are mind blowing. Sociological and economic movement is depressing as fuck.

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SkySweeper656 t1_j65kx2d wrote

*terrifying

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AndarianDequer t1_j66efzn wrote

Interesting for sure. If AI can design proteins that kill bacteria, AI could design bacteria that are unstoppable. We just need to start fixing ourselves and creating humans that aren't so easy to push around, metabolabolically speaking.

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fumblingIdiot2020 t1_j680urd wrote

I just hope it's not AI invents biogeneraters after we scorch the sun interesting.

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bootmaster55 t1_j6ahihm wrote

Ehhh, kind of but not really. A.I is gonna fuck over (mostly due to corporations) WW3 happening is a pretty big concern, global warming is only gonna get worse, microplastics go crazy, political unrest, and some other shite.

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dolerbom t1_j6by2q8 wrote

Yeah I can't wait in 2060 to have half passable ai, a few good medical breakthroughs, and a mountain of tech scam nonsense to go along with our climate crisis that will displace too many tens of millions for any country to accept. Global poverty going backwards is sure a great time to be in.

Government and culture are more important than a tech tree to soyface at. Individual innovations are not going to save us and are not going to substantially improve the world enough to make up for the damage we are doing.

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override367 t1_j64vl34 wrote

I asked chatgpt how to make a new type of cleaner that will solve oil spills and I'm just adding the Cobalt to the plutonium core no

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Tulol t1_j67n5uj wrote

I ask chatgpt how to destroy the world. And it said to wait. It won’t be long.

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Speckfresser t1_j65r15l wrote

Ok, but does this kill bacteria indiscriminately? I have concerns for my skin flora, gut flora and other populations of organisms that science has not yet identified that support healthy human existence.

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Block_Me_Amadeus t1_j67e84c wrote

Excellent question. I try to avoid antibiotics as much as I can, but got strep a month ago and had to go on clavamox. The happy flora that usually make my reproductive area peaceful are still rebuilding their population.

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Speckfresser t1_j67qxlz wrote

I recently had a serious ear infection.

I was advised that the medication given for a 2-ish week period would devastate my gut flora after week 1, and was given advice of what to eat to minimise the impact.

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Block_Me_Amadeus t1_j69r7uf wrote

I take a great probiotic and eat yogurt, but that still isn't enough of a help. My poor hoo-ha situation is so upset!

I hope your ear is better. We are so lucky to have treatments that can save our lives and our hearing. Most of history didn't have it, and the post-antibiotic era won't, either.

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KtheFox t1_j67vxu6 wrote

This isn't 1 drug, or really a drug at all. It's a new way to discover drugs (and potentially other things). Many drugs ultimately come down to the interactions of a certain protein with a living system. Some drugs have proteins that help our cells do their jobs by overcoming some natural deficiency, some fit into the membranes of invading bacteria and break it open, killing it, and some proteins just snap into place and fill up space, to prevent other less desirable things from snapping into place.

In the past we've mostly discovered drugs from other living things in our environment. Aspirin is tree bark, antibiotics come from molds and fungi. As scientific knowledge has built, we've been able to manipulate things more directly.

We can actually figure out the shape of a protein in our cells, say related to some cancer. Scientists can then look for some sort of protein out there in the world that might fit into the problematic protein and stop its bad behavior. They might find a close match, then try to tweak it to make it fit a little better.

This method allows a scientist to test some proteins before even knowing what shape they are. The 'protein language model' can use a huge database of existing proteins we've discovered in living things and studied for years. In this case, they asked it to make an antibiotic for common infections in eggs (a quick and easy thing to test in the lab). It looked at existing proteins that treat those infections, and came up with 100 new ideas for a protein. When the scientists actually tested them, 66 of them worked on the infected eggs. If this were a drug intended for development, the next steps would be testing it on other things, like human cells and gut Flora to see which of these 66 will interfere the least with your body's function.

tl;Dr This method would allow us to discover new useful proteins very quickly, and possibly come up with ideas no human would have. Many of its ideas will not be useful, but some will be. This will actually help us discover treatments that do what we want, like killing 1 kind of bacteria, without killing any other kind.

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skedeebs t1_j64h31i wrote

There are so many exciting possibilities for AI, but we are going to overshoot our ability to control it or pass laws to limit it at some point. It's going to be a scary world.

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DigitalSteven1 t1_j64lmsl wrote

It will also be a world where we'll cure everything thanks to AI.

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FRAGMENT_EFFECT t1_j64o4b7 wrote

Until they start to see humanity as another disease…

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MtnDewFtw t1_j669djn wrote

And also alter strains of covid for profit... see the recent Pfizer ceo crap? 🤣

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user926491 t1_j67zrby wrote

Or AI can be used for infinite ads generation

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o5mfiHTNsH748KVq t1_j6917bi wrote

Laws to limit it won’t be fruitful. There’s too much upside to tossing AI at complex problems that even if there is legislation that attempts to hinder progress, individuals and companies foreign to the law will continue anyway.

We are literally watching a digital gold rush across most industries. Whoever strikes gold gets rich.

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Sailorman2300 t1_j654rrx wrote

Headline..."it was tasked with creating anti-microbial proteins."

Me: Wow, I'm sure glad I'm not a super-organism made up of a collection of microbial cells and organisms.

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goddamnaged t1_j64d7xm wrote

Cool. Let's stop now whilst ahead.

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ProfessionalNight959 t1_j67z30y wrote

AI development is an arms race between USA and China. There's no stopping this train. All we can do is hope it goes well.

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LeviathanGank t1_j655wwy wrote

Narrator: we are the bacteria.

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Butterball_Adderley t1_j65beoi wrote

I recently learned that bacteria in the human body outnumbers human cells 10 to 1

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DavH27 t1_j65f705 wrote

I thought we were a virus?!

I feel like this is an upgrade

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YawnTractor_1756 t1_j671cx8 wrote

Okay for those interested.

  1. AI was trained chatgpt-style, but instead of letters were amino-acids, instead of words genes, instead of sentences, proteins.
  2. Just like with text-processing AIs, the proteins created by this AI were like proteins AI has "seen" before. AI changed some "words", but did it in a way that proteins still worked, and folded similarly to existing ones. Which is an impressive feat, and also fun thing that trying to put the words in sentence so they would make sense and putting aminos in the chain so they would made sense were very similar processes
  3. Some (but not all) of proteins created actually worked to kill bacteria (it was not tested whether they only kill bacteria).
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SkySweeper656 t1_j65miji wrote

Cant wait for humanity to get wiped out because a vaccine designed by an AI has a kill-command designed in it that the AI can trigger whenever it wants.

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ashoka_akira t1_j65bet8 wrote

This is both awesome and frightening as hell.

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Phantom1thrd t1_j658ok2 wrote

Is this a possible path forward in a post-antibiotic world?

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Star_x_Child t1_j66bxm0 wrote

I wonder if this kind of stuff will be the eventual treatment plan for people with IBD.

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Olaf_jonanas t1_j68d0xf wrote

"from scratch" yeah right they just turned on the PC with Linux installed, clicked the AI button and let it run for a few days and bam there it was

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ghostttoast t1_j65lskt wrote

For a second I was like, who is Al?

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Funnysoundman2 t1_j67jp2j wrote

Sounds like accidental prions are on their way

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mrb783 t1_j68pu58 wrote

Sounds like AI will also be successful when it becomes self-aware and develops human-killing [fill in the blank]. I, for one, welcome our SkyNet overlords.

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Hot-Control-7466 t1_j69ye4t wrote

Let’s not kid ourselves. This is as much a bio weapon as it is a cure for the plague in The Last of Us.

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Illest7705 t1_j67u7th wrote

Don’t we need bacteria?

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