Shulou(Shulou.com)06/02 Report--

Novel coronavirus, let artificial intelligence and biotechnology appear densely in the eyes of the general public.

The technology is expected not only by ordinary people suffering from the epidemic, but also by many bigwigs who hold social power.

For example, at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) on February 14th, Microsoft founder and philanthropist Bill Gates proposed that artificial intelligence can "understand complex biological systems" and that gene editing technology has the potential to cure AIDS, which can be used to build a new generation of health solutions that may save the world.

As early as February 2015, when Bill Gates was asked what he thought of artificial intelligence, he said he was "very worried" that machines would become intelligent enough in a few years' time.

Judging from the combination of the two pieces of news, it really makes people sincerely express the feeling that "the richest man in the world used to be really fragrant and strange."...

Like artificial intelligence, gene editing has been questioned by the ethics and effectiveness of science and technology in the past few years.

Some researchers even believe that the integration of artificial intelligence and biotechnology will reshape the form of human life in the future, allowing the "human threat theory" to climb to another high-rise.

So, in the eyes of Bill Gates, how does "AI+ genetic technology" change the field of health care, and will it turn human beings into a "new species"?

Meeting AI at the corner: the predestined encounter of the two "human threat" harvesters

There is no need to mention artificial intelligence, everyone should have heard the cocoon in their ears.

But I'm afraid ordinary people will be furious when they hear what Bill Gates calls "gene editing." After all, the incident of he Jiankui's "transformation of twin girls" is still there. As for creating the perfect baby and subtracting DNA clips, it sounds like unscrupulous perverted scientists and deep-pocketed super villains in sci-fi movies.

But in fact, the emergence of gene editing is the inevitable result of the whole society entering the era of artificial intelligence.

Let's briefly introduce the relatively mature CRISPR technology in gene editing that Bill Gates regards as the "official CP" of artificial intelligence.

CRISPR is known as the "gene scissors hand". Its full name is Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, a series of repeated DNA sequences that cells can use to "remember" each virus that attacks them, and when the same virus attacks again, it can give organisms some protection or immunity.

Therefore, the use of CRISPR to cut and edit the relevant DNA can theoretically resist the invasion of viruses and plasmids.

This technology has been relatively mature at the practical level and has shown a certain curative effect in many genetic diseases.

For example, the NHS trust Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital in London used gene editing technology TALEN to successfully cure one-year-old girl Layla's leukemia. The Bill Gates Foundation has also invested tens of millions of dollars in research on how to make CRISPR-Cas9 alter the genome of insects to fight malaria and other mosquito-borne diseases.

As a result, it is believed that up to 89 per cent of human disease-related genetic mutations can be corrected with CRISPR gene editing.

So how does gene editing have something to do with artificial intelligence? This also starts with the practical problems encountered by genetic technology.

You know, the human genome consists of 20000 genes and more than 3 billion base pairs of these gene letters. Sequencing, analysis and even accurate cutting and editing of these DNA require complete data processing in order to ensure the integrity and reliability of the results.

As a result, previous progress in gene editing has been stagnated because the data to be evaluated is too complex and large.

But the ability of artificial intelligence and machine learning to deal with large-scale computing is beginning to take a new turn for the breakthrough in genetic technology.

Take the rapid commercial progress of gene testing as an example, it often takes ten years to complete DNA sequencing, but using AI high-throughput sequencing, it can be completed in one day. In the COVID-19 epidemic, AI also made a wonderful contribution to the rapid identification of virus RNA.

It is obvious that the addition of artificial intelligence can also enable gene editing technology to take better action, thus promoting revolutionary changes in the medical model.

What kind of technology magic box does AI-blessed gene editing open?

At present, the introduction of artificial intelligence into medical care has been unstoppable, but also brought large-scale commercial value. According to consultants Frost and Sullivan, artificial intelligence systems will generate $6.7 billion in revenue from global health care by 2021.

However, this will not only bring positive results in the fight against disease, but also involve a series of complex ethical, moral, legal and other effects.

Let's start with the positive side, which is what Bill Gates advocates.

First of all, faster and better understanding of human beings themselves.

One of the areas in which artificial intelligence is developing significantly is genomics, which includes the study of a complete set of genes in organisms, which gives the huge amount of data accumulated by genetic science a better opportunity to display its talents.

With this insight, human beings can have a clearer understanding of how organisms are affected and mutated at the genetic level, leading to different diseases, so as to seek breakthroughs in a targeted way.

For example, everyone has heard of Alzheimer's disease, there is still no very effective treatment, but some studies have shown that it may be related to genetic factors (that is, genes), but the emergence of AI and gene editing is likely to bring a new dawn.

Second, promote precision medicine.

Some research papers have shown that using the deep learning algorithm as the computer model of gene editing scissors can reconstruct the specific determinants in vivo and ensure the accuracy of the scissors. To put it simply, the AI model is used to predict the probability of a person's response to genetic technology intervention, which helps to achieve a personalized and highly accurate treatment plan for each patient.

For example, Google's tool depth variable uses the latest artificial intelligence technology to convert high-throughput sequencing into a more accurate image of a complete genome, which can distinguish between small mutations and random errors.

Third, technological upgrading may lead to new treatments.

The ability of gene editing technology also provides doctors with more choices.

For a long time, for example, patients who need organ transplants have to go through a long wait and matching. But the George Church team, director of the Center for Genome Research at Harvard Medical School, produced 37 genetically edited pigs in 2017. After editing, the organs of these pigs can be accepted by the human immune system, and there will be no rejection after transplantation into the human body.

Of course, there are still many possibilities. Katsuhiko Hayashi, a stem cell biologist at Kyushu University in Japan, tested a new technique called in vitro gamete (IVG) in mice, which is thought to have the potential to reshape human fertility and achieve asexual reproduction in the future. It can even take skin from a dead person and create his offspring.

In addition to the above added value, artificial intelligence also undertakes the important task of escorting gene editors and avoiding potential problems.

Gene editing is often irreversible, so gene editing is simulated by intelligent technology and supercomputer in advance to predict some problems before the experiment begins.

In May 2019, the University of North Texas (UNT) research team used the Maverick supercomputer of the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) to conduct the first all-atomic molecular dynamics simulation of DNA cleavage catalyzed by CRISPR, accurately revealing where and how it cuts DNA and determining how it works, thus helping gene editors cut DNA in a more controlled way.

The Dark side of the Moon: the Technical Code towards the "Post-Human" era

Like artificial intelligence, where there are advocates, there are pessimists. The two may even be miraculously reflected in the same person in different time dimensions.

So is it possible for genetic technology to become the devil that "leads to human extinction"?

There are three main aspects of the core logic behind this speculation:

1. Technical ethics has not been established.

As a tool, technology itself has a dual nature, which can not only be used by human beings, bring the expansion of power and good utility, but also be used to do evil.

After decades of development, artificial intelligence has established a relatively comprehensive social ethics system. For example, the democratization of technology, through open source algorithms, public hearings and other forms to achieve co-governance; and for example, from the philosophical level to define the differentiation between human beings and machines.

The addition of gene editing has changed the public's understanding of the attribute of "human" from a deeper level, and posed a new challenge to biosafety and human morality.

two。 Gene-driven risk.

In the absence of a consensus on the relevant norms, genetic modification of organisms is likely to produce a series of chain reactions.

For example, the previous Debug project, carried out by Verily, a life science research unit of Google's parent company Alphabet, sterilized mosquitoes through machine learning and computer vision, releasing 2000 mosquitoes that carry bacteria in an area.

But a mosquito that has edited the gene drives all its offspring to carry the gene. In other words, over time, the gene will penetrate the entire population.

So, if some kind of mosquito is thoroughly informed, will it have an impact on the ecological chain of the earth? Will it become closely related to the survival of human beings? These are unpredictable. For example, herbicides and insect repellents developed through gene editing technology may have an impact on other species in the process of use.

As we learned in this epidemic, "it is not too much to guard against the worst that may happen until it is clear."

3. Social problems caused by misuse of technology.

As we mentioned earlier, CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing is relatively mature. From 2013 to 2018, more than $1 billion poured into such startups.

There are giants like Google and Microsoft. In 2019, for example, Google's parent company, Alphabet, invested $60 million in a gene editing company.

But the essence of capital is the pursuit of profit, while lowering the overall threshold of gene editing, the problem of abuse also begins to emerge.

On the one hand, many researchers have begun to perform embryo-based surgery. Some scientists claim that by adding or removing genes to embryos, parents can directly customize their own appearance. There are also biologists who inject themselves with CRISPR to modify genes for muscle growth.

When some people begin to accept genetic modification, will those human beings who do not have the corresponding knowledge, technology and money become "inferior ethnic groups", and how can the resulting inequality and discrimination be eliminated? Will it directly lead to war and destruction?

It is as if we are sitting on a running "snow country train", everything is unknown.

Of course, it is too early to worry about this.

Just like Bill Gates from pessimism to true fragrance, the combination of genetic technology and electronic technology to create a new human is only logical reasoning and imagination at the scientific level. On the one hand, it may not be possible, just as strong artificial intelligence is still very far away from human society; second, even if the above problems arise, it will still be decades away, and we should have figured out a way to face them scientifically by then.

In fact, the current situation of gene editing is very similar to that of artificial intelligence a few years ago.

On the one hand, there are many limitations in the technology itself.

For example, there may be a miss effect, that is, it leads to additional genetic changes, leading to mutations that cause harm to the human body.

Giants such as BAT have also invested a lot of manpower and material resources in medical AI, but many algorithm models are in the stage of training and optimization and have not been applied on a large scale. This also further slows the promotion process of gene editing.

But at the same time, the technology has also become the target of competition between countries.

For example, the Advanced Research projects Agency (DARPA) of the US Department of Defense is already preparing for a new generation of biological weapons made by new gene editors and is developing antidotes. Europe also hopes to maintain its advantage in the disease application of CRISPR and has planned to conduct its first CRISPR clinical trial. To increase and accelerate research and development has also become an urgent mission for the team of Chinese scientists.

Technology-related social norms have also begun to be valued and established.

As Bill Gates mentioned in his speech, gene therapy is used to reduce the cost of treatment and make it affordable to the public. Chinese science and technology enterprises have also begun to call for the establishment of an efficient communication platform for dialogue between scientific and technological innovation and ethics, and to speed up the formulation of management methods for the research, development and application of biotechnology such as gene editing, so as to ensure the positive effects of new technologies from multiple angles.

As Pierrot Sgarufei, director of the Silicon Valley Institute of artificial Intelligence, once said in his book Human 2.0, the four problems of "birth, aging, sickness and death" are being brought into the scope of technological solutions.

This is perhaps the closest we have to technology, and the farthest moment from the concept of human beings under "fundamentalism". Welcome to the beautiful new world of Human 2.0.

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