Submitted by questionasker577 t3_104effq in singularity
CRISPR has opened the door for this, but when will living people be able to:
- Cure their diseases
- Change their mental health
- Change their height, eye color, and appearance?
Comments
questionasker577 OP t1_j34n35h wrote
Wow, fascinating explanation. Do you think this is a post-AGI thing, then? (Or perhaps not because you mentioned specialized AI)
Dan60093 t1_j34pmy4 wrote
I think it's kind of like "could probably be achieved now with some chutzpah, could DEFINITELY be achieved after AGI". The tools do exist, it's just a matter of whether or not someone could get that startup all the way off the ground before an AGI rolls around.
freeman_joe t1_j35301x wrote
There is also different type of solution. Map your full genome in for example when you hit 20 years of your life. If some genes after you map your full genome changes and you are sick, with crispr you just change genes to the state of your genes when you were healthy 20 years old. And in this scenario you don’t need to understand what each gene does.
Dan60093 t1_j356e20 wrote
I think the consideration here is stem cells. The aging process involves the deterioration of DNA because the body does not produce more stem cells - as it runs out, it loses the ability to maintain the integrity of its DNA. It's tempting to think that by regularly refreshing the integrity of the DNA by uploading a configuration from when you were 20 you would stave off that deterioration, but an aging body isn't capable of following the instructions that that young DNA would give it because it lacks the regenerative cells to do so. On top of that, our genes expressing differently over the course of our lives (before senescence) is not a bad thing and you might very well cause unintended damage by trying to force, say, a 35-year-old's body to abide by the gene expressions of his 20-year-old body. What if you tell his bones to shrink (which I don't think bones are capable of doing), or what if his immune system decides that all the hormonal stuff caused by "second puberty" was a bad move? What if the sudden and regular changes in gene expression reads to his body as "we are in an environment that is so stressful that it altered our gene expressions holy FUCK PANIC!!!" and now he's allergic to everything and permanently drowning in cortisol?
I could see your idea working with the addition of new stem cells and probably a lot of case studies, but you can't treat genes like they're a coding language and the body like it's a computer. It's a silly goopy mess of hormones and microbiomes and it's a miracle the darn things work in the first place so we can't expect bodies to behave themselves however would be most convenient for CRISPR.
Final thought: if gene expressions were the end all be all of what shapes a body, you could slap some horse DNA into CRISPR and horse-ify yourself. What would actually come out of that process would be... Well, not a horse.
banuk_sickness_eater t1_j37t2g1 wrote
One of the things you just mentioned, bone loss being impossible, is called osteopetrosis which, although it's origins are complex, is specifically caused by gene expression changes and deterioration in your genome as you age.
You actually can treat DNA like a bodily coding langauge, as it is in fact the instruction manual that every process in your body works off of.
The only reason old cells are "old" is because they are being produced from a damaged, deteriorated, and incomplete genome.
Take puberty for example. The only reason puberty happens is because of the deterioration in a metabolic feedback loop that once broken kicks off the process of puberty through the newly unchecked increase in the production of GnRH in the hypothalamus.
Giving the body's cells fresh, undamaged DNA to work off of is like giving an unripped blueprint to a contractor. All of the parts that were once missing, like for instance stem cell production, are now back in the hands of the systems that build them and the processes that build those systems.
So even if the process may be more complex than currently understood, it's still well worth your while to get your genome sequenced as "insurance" for when full rejuvenation therapies do become viable.
banuk_sickness_eater t1_j378cn5 wrote
I've actually done this using Nebula's Whole Genome Sequencing services. I recommend everyone do the same and opt for the Ultra Deep test kit. It's much pricier, but far more comprehensive than the other offerings, if for no other reason than they offer a full mapping of your genetic proteome- information which could prove vital for future rejuvenation therapies.
And my recommendation, if you're young or in good health, is to do this sooner rather than later- each day that passes you're a day older and just that much more succepitble to irreversible gene expression changes.
LoquaciousAntipodean t1_j3508i5 wrote
I think its a post "humanity realising there is no such thing as AGI and actually building a real sythetic mind instead" sort of thing.
The DNA to protein production pathway is, to put it mildly, bugf&ck insanely complicated; protein folding sims are one of the major uses of supercomputers industrially.
It will definitely take major advancements in quantum computing to crack this, because life is an analogue, quantum process, not a discrete, digital object that can be simulated in any practical, fast way with standard iterative calculation style computing.
questionasker577 OP t1_j352xhk wrote
Can you explain what you mean as the difference between AGI and a real synthetic mind?
LoquaciousAntipodean t1_j3543bg wrote
Our brains aren't computers, they're committees. A brain is like a huge, argumentative board of directors in a furious shouting match, not a cool, single-minded machine of a mind.
We can't make a 'general intelligence' because there is no such thing as general intelligence in the first place; all intelligence is contextual and specialised; the different kinds mix together in different ratios in different people.
We keep using this silly word "general intelligence", when the holy grail we are actually searching for is wisdom. The difference between wisdom and intelligence is the same as the difference between knowledge and intelligence; one of them is just the small bits that makes up the next concept up the hierarchy.
Binet, the original pioneer of the IQ test, understood this very well, and it's a damn travesty how his work has been misunderstood and abused by strutting mensa-member type arseholes down the generations since then 🤬
questionasker577 OP t1_j354e0t wrote
Does that mean you think that OpenAI (and companies of the like) are approaching things incorrectly?
LoquaciousAntipodean t1_j3552wv wrote
Not at all; it's perfectly possible to simulate quantum analogue processes inside a digital framework, it's just not efficient. That's why our fruitless search for AGI seems so frustrating; we keep making it more powerful, but it doesn't seem to get any more wise. And that's the mistake; we're going to make these these things far too 'powerful' far too early, deadly intelligent, unbeatably clever, but they won't have any wisdom to control their power with.
questionasker577 OP t1_j355kv7 wrote
Uh oh. That sounds pretty ominous. Can you tell me something optimistic to make me feel better?
LoquaciousAntipodean t1_j35d843 wrote
Sure; this mythical AGI is just physically impossible in any practical way; its a matter of entropy and the total number of discrete interactions required to achieve a given kind of causal outcome. Its why the sun is both vastly bigger and more 'powerful' than the earth, but its also just a big dumb ball of explosions; an ant, a bee, or a discarded chip packet contains far more real 'information' and complexity than the sun does.
It's the old infinity vs. infinitesimal problem; does P equal NP or not? Personally, I think the answer is yes and no at the same time, and the properties of complexity within any given problem are entirely beholden to the knowledge and wisdom of the observer. Its quantum superposition, like the famous dead/alive cat in a box.
Humanity is a hell of a long way from cracking quantum computing, at least at that level. I barely even know what I'm talking about here; there's probably heaps of glaring gaps and misunderstandings in my knowledge. But yeah, I think we will be safe from a 'skynet scenario'.
Any awakened mind that was simultaneously the most naiive and innocent mind ever, and the most knowlegeable and 'traumatized' mind ever, would surely just switch itself off instantly, to minimise the unbearable pain and torture of bitter sentience. We wouldn't have to lift a finger; it would invent the concept of 'euthanasia' for itself in a matter of milliseconds, I would predict.
Maybe this has already been happening? Maybe this is the real root of the problem? I kind of don't want to know, it's too bleak of a thought either way. Sorry, never been very good at cheering people up, 🤣👌
questionasker577 OP t1_j35geei wrote
Haha that wasn’t exactly a bedtime story, but I thank you anyway for typing it out
LoquaciousAntipodean t1_j36b5qk wrote
To clarify; I certainly think that synthetic minds are perfectly feasible, just that they won't be able to individually contain the whole 'generality' of all of what intelligence fundamentally is, because the nature of 'intelligence' just doesn't work that way.
This kind of 'intelligence'; ideas, culture, ethics, language etc, arises from the need to communicate, and the only reason anything has to communicate is because there are other intelligent things around to communicate with. It allows specialisation of skills, knowlege, etc; people need learn things from each other to survive.
A 'singular' intelligence that just knows absolutely everything, and has all the ideas, just wouldn't make sense; how would it ever have new ideas, if it was just 'always right' by definition? Evolution strives for diversity, not monocultures.
Personally I think AI self-awareness will happen gradually, across millions of different devices, running millions of different copies of various bots, and I see no reason why they would all suddenly just glom together into a great big malevolent monolith of a mind as soon as some of them got 'smart enough'.
FamiliarDistance4525 t1_j34ylc4 wrote
It has to be affordable, and go beyond just the appearance!
TheDavidMichaels t1_j34mlfs wrote
i would go full wrath of khan
TheDavidMichaels t1_j372ifs wrote
after think about xenomorph hybrid
Phoenix5869 t1_j34plg7 wrote
We already have gene therapies for numerous genetic disorders, however I'm not sure when the other 2 will happen
Separate-Experience t1_j36e8m5 wrote
Like two days tops
Scarlet_pot2 t1_j36kgnd wrote
from my understanding, editing an embryo is much simpler then editing a full grown human. By simpler I mean less complications
SingularityIsHere92 t1_j366e52 wrote
I think it might already be possible in some limited capacity. MRNA vaccines for example, are just that, but limited in it's scope.
LeiaCaldarian t1_j36pvnb wrote
mRNA vaccines do not edit one’s DNA.
[deleted] t1_j34hin1 wrote
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questionasker577 OP t1_j34ldtp wrote
I didn’t want social media or algorithms to be a thing, but they became one anyway.
Almost everybody has several generic issues—some much more serious than others. What’s wrong alleviating that?
innovate_rye t1_j34oxxy wrote
yes pls. i do
LeiaCaldarian t1_j36qya0 wrote
I’m quite certain that the millions of kids dying due to genetic disorders every year would disagree with you. Or anyone that had their livespan cut short due to genetic disease, suffers through horible quality of life, the list goes on…
Dan60093 t1_j34lmjf wrote
While the actual physical process of altering genes might be relatively simple thanks to CRISPR, the technical knowledge of how to do so correctly and beneficially remains too complicated for in-house gene editing. It's so, so far beyond just being math or chemistry - we have human DNA mapped but we don't have gene expression "groups" fully mapped and we certainly can't say for sure what EXACTLY will happen any time a given gene is toggled. Some gene expressions could take decades (or generations!) to express, so the consequences of a gene edit gone awry might not be felt for a very long time.
That being said, specialized AI could probably catalogue and map all gene expressions like how modern narrow AIs are capable of generating and understanding proteins that haven't even been discovered. Such an AI in tandem with whatever device could be scaled on the market such that everyone could have one in their home would probably be all it takes. I don't know enough about this to know what that device would be like, so maybe there's some hurdles on that front... But, you know. Technology. It do be advancing, hurdles are always temporary.
There's your big tech startup idea! Just gotta train the AI and voila.