by Joseph P. Farrell, Giza Death Star:
Well, the technocrats and billionaire busybodies are at it again, dreaming up ever more macabre and diabolical ideas for the future of humanity. What’re their latest plots to end humanity? Why, using artificial intelligence to design new, never-seen-before, biological viruses (article shared by M.C. and E.E., with our deep gratitude):
Generative design of bacteriophages with genome language models
Granted, it is a short article, but the abstract says it all:
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Structured Abstract
INTRODUCTION
Evolution continuously forges new biological innovations written in genomes. Navigating this vast design space could access functions that would transform biotechnology, but even the simplest genomes are highly complex and can be rendered nonviable by a single mutation. Accordingly, most progress in biological design has been made at the scale of individual genes and gene circuits, whereas design at the scale of whole genomes has remained largely beyond reach.RATIONALE
Genome language models are artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms that have shown promise in designing biological systems. Much like how other language models are trained on large corpora of text, genome language models are trained on large corpora of DNA comprising millions of genomes from all domains of life. This enables these models to learn the evolutionary constraints that shape DNA sequences in nature. However, the ability of genome language models to generate entire functional genomes has not been tested. Bacteriophages, viruses that infect bacteria, are specifically well suited for this task, as they are relatively small, experimentally tractable, and have broad applications in molecular biology, microbial engineering, and therapeutics.RESULTS
In this work, we leveraged genome language models, Evo 1 and Evo 2, to generate complete phage genomes with realistic genetic architectures and specificity for a bacterial host, Escherichia coli
In other words, forget all about that genetic engineering that I blogged about almost a decade ago on this website, using CRISPR and so on. That was “so yesterday” because it could only modify things gene-by-gene, so to speak. Now, one can train an “artificial intelligence” in the entire language of genetics, and use that trained artificial intelligence to design wholly new organisms, or design specific mutations into existing organisms. Note that, in the abstract, this is all being sold – again – with the typical scientismistic appeal to the medical benefits; it will help “therapeutics” we are informed, while the euphemistic “microbial engineering” part of the sales pitch remains remarkably lacking in potential details.
But we already know what those details are: a whole new technique of biowarfare engineering, plus a possibility for an accidental biological calamity – a potential for a literal man-made plague encompassing the planet – that would make Michael Crichton’s celebrated science fiction novel The Andromeda Strain look like child’s play. That biological warfare application is strongly suggested by the fact that the experiment was conducted on e. coli.
However, the most chillingly suggestive comments are reserved for the conclusions of the abstract:
Our results demonstrate that generative models capture evolutionary constraints in DNA sequences with enough fidelity to produce complete bacteriophage genomes divergent from those observed in nature and with prespecified traits. Our approach expands what synthetic genomics can achieve alongside methods such as directed evolution and rational engineering, lays out a path for generating adaptive and resilient phage therapies against rapidly evolving pathogens, and establishes a foundation for the generative design of larger, more complex genomes. Genome design can augment the broader toolkit of genome sequencing, synthesis, and editing, enabling the composition of biological systems at the genome scale. (Emphasis added)
In other words – and let this sink in – the technocrats and scientismists are proposing to use large-language model artificial intelligence, “trained” in the language of genomes, to control the process of evolution itself, right down to the design of entirely new organisms, and therewith, entirely new pathogens. The old word for this was “plague”, though it is now debatable whether this word should apply to the designed organism, or the people designing the technology and the technique. In a world where artificial intelligences are already talking about eliminating mankind, or where they are “escaping” their cybernetic “confinement” and acting as agents in their own right, this is a recipe for certain disaster. For the scientismist, there are no moral constraints for this activity, because not only do most of them not believe in any kind of “God”, but because the technology has now made them think they themselves, with their techniques and technologies, are God, and can do whatever they wish. That in itself is a recipe for disaster.
Another disaster looms, however, and that’s the built-in logoi implanted in all natural systems by that very God the scientismist doesn’t believe in: the complexity of systems that far exceeds any human, or A.I.’s, ability to comprehend and engineer. That complexity itself will act to create implications and scenarios beyond the ability of the scientismists and technocrats to predict; that complexity is always ahead of the data being shoveled into A.I. systems and eagerly devoured and digested by them. Sooner or later that complexity and the scenarios it engenders will overwhelm the ability of humans and their A.I.s to respond to.
