Engineer of stuff that is alive or computes. Follow us all to that blue place.
Joined January 2021
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Tom Knight -- e/π¦π΄ retweeted
Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from biology
As if those people could come close to inventing a dog. Dogs are WAY beyond our ability to understand or engineer, and will be for a very long time. We don't know in detail how the even the simplest bacteria work, and can't make one without an existing one.
Tom Knight -- e/π¦π΄ retweeted
I've been prototyping an automated peer review project. With current models you get human level peer review for about $0.10 of tokens. For $5 you can rederive every result, check every statistical inference, and audit every paper cited in both directions.
There are about 100m papers in the scientific corpus. Most are not important. Many are sloppy. For structural reasons it's essentially impossible to change published work, even to correct a typo.
For $500m today you can thoroughly audit every paper ever written. Every p-hacked result, every plagiarist, every fabrication, every citation club, everything.
I don't have $500m so instead I build a tree, focusing on the 1% of papers that carry 99% of the signal, doing a cheap first pass looking for obvious problems. I can find 90% of the nonsense for a few hundred dollars of tokens.
Any guesses where the biggest surprises will be found?
I've been suggesting replacing high school/freshman calculus courses with linear algebra for a long time.
Tom Knight -- e/π¦π΄ retweeted
π€ My latest post proposes AI safety measures that may sound less insane now than earlier this year. No one else is saying this, but many are thinking it:
If only we had small, viable, low complexity cells, with, say, 500 or so genes, that could be carefully studied and completely understood so that we could solve these problems ;-).
You should read Sussman's book, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. Consider MIT and Northeastern as alternative universities. Also look at Clojure and Racket languages.
Tom Knight -- e/π¦π΄ retweeted
Or just use Clojure. You don't need hot-reloading tools, the language itself allows you to incrementally build a running program, like any good Lisp. π₯
Your periodic reminder <github.com/JetBrains/JetBraiβ¦> exists, making the JVM likely the best combination of runtime performance & hot code-reloading available today.
Tom Knight -- e/π¦π΄ retweeted
I hope the Irkutsk event can be contained - itβs a clear example of why physical biosecurity is the biosecurity that matters. You can screen all the DNA synthesis you want but the best defense is to detect, treat, and eventually eradicate the bad stuff thatβs already out there
A very effective, albeit somewhat slow, path is water surveillance. Rivers carry material across borders and outside national boundaries into the ocean.
Tom Knight -- e/π¦π΄ retweeted
Yeah, this is the whole point about fundamentally needing to 1000x change our national posture on biointelligence collection - we need technically verified data from trusted sources - world has changed
If this were a cyber event - there would be 1000 companies and govt agencies all over it -
seems so obvious
Wouldnβt be waiting in the FSB
Doubt seeds fear and bad decisions
Tom Knight -- e/π¦π΄ retweeted
We need to be monitoring every port of entry on the planet.... yesterday.
If not, weβre putting our whole biosecurity bet in situations like this on:
- the remoteness of this facility in an interconnected world
- the competency and care of the FSB
We need global collection and monitoring immediately so we can track this if (as) it starts moving out of Siberia (or every time something like this happens)
π¨Breaking. There's been a pneumonic plague outbreak at a BSL-3 lab in Siberia, Russia.π¨
"Nearly 200 People Under Observation After Irkutsk Lab Worker Dies From Plague" - Moscow Times
This is fact, and also the inciting incident in my book BIOLOGICAL WAR: A SCENARIO, which is unnerving.
Will post more as I learn more, including from Russian speaking sourcesπ§΅
shorturl.at/De4kW
Tom Knight -- e/π¦π΄ retweeted
Most of the anti-college sentiment today comes from people on the political right who don't share your values
This puts you in an awkward place but a powerful one.
The best world is a secret third world that cares about science (like the left) but ignores credentials (like the right). You are uniquely positioned to help build that world.
Tom Knight -- e/π¦π΄ retweeted
Should move BSL 3/4 labs to be fully robotic. These are one of the most dangerous places in the world for humans to work and we often put junior technicians in them and hope for no mistakes.
Russian authorities are responding to an incident in which a suspected dangerous infection was released as a result of a laboratory accident in Siberia and a researcher died. cnn.it/3Ubwb4F
Tom Knight -- e/π¦π΄ retweeted
you still have to do the hard stuff: to build an ai company in bio, you also need to build a bio company.
joehorsman.substack.com/p/heβ¦