I for one welcome our new enzyme overlords!! 
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I remember seeing an episode of some cartoon (I don’t recall which), where a scientist invented something that would eat anything but glass for a similar purpose. Then it got out…
Actual quote from the story “This work really demonstrates the power of bringing together different disciplines, from synthetic biology to chemical engineering to artificial intelligence…"
I think I’m the cartoon they self-replicated too. Always a good idea.
Reminds me of a Star Trek TNG episode.
https://twitter.com/historydefined/status/1523268543759851525
https://twitter.com/ProfThibodeau/status/1523336845446238211
https://twitter.com/ProfThibodeau/status/1523382979909021696
Are the scrolls contacting us about our car’s extended warranty?
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WTG: Researchers may have discovered the cause of SIDS
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They found the activity of the enzyme butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) was significantly lower in babies who died of SIDS compared to living infants and other non-SIDS infant deaths. BChE plays a major role in the brain’s arousal pathway, explaining why SIDS typically occurs during sleep.
OK, so what causes the lower levels of BChE? Nature or nurture?
Yep, that is the next question. Along with how to test/screen for it and how to treat it.
Hopefully, this is the breakthrough and the next parts come faster.
If this works out that’s great news for potentially cheap and easy desalination.
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The study used the blood from natal heel pricks that are used for other screenings (PKU , etc), so pretty soon after birth. Not much time for nurture (at least extra-utero) to make a difference.
Cool beans.
So, now the question becomes, genetic or gestatic? (Yeah, neologism (according to this site), meaning “during pregnancy.”)
I think they have yet to narrow it down. But the lower expression of the enzyme might mean closer monitoring for a baby and reduce the incidence of SIDS, which would be awesome.
Another Surrealist AI drawing I love:
Prompt: Scenic views in this National Park made of baking ingredients
I said I wasn’t going to turn this into a DALLE-2 thread, but I was crossing my fingers behind my back.
I think this is this stupid AI Bot is the most important thing to happen in 2022.
It is capable of generating semi-professional level art at the push of the button. And it feels like Intelligence, human or alien, is just on the other side of that mountain of flour.
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Google engineer put on leave for shouting that their latest Chat Bot is sentient.
I don’t quite buy “sentient” and wtf does sentient even mean? But I think the current gen miiiiiiiight have human-like understanding and creativity.
It’s hard to say because we really don’t know shit about intelligence. Human intelligence. Monkey intelligence. Dog intelligence. Cat intelligence. We have no idea at all about how brains actually work. We just know that “consciousness” and “sentience” is going on inside our brains, somewhere, somehow. As such, we have no way of measuring intelligence directly. We try to invent indirect measures (eg. IQ tests) but they’re pretty shitty, also…
So, my guess is that we will invent a “Strong AI” before we know what it is. Maybe we have already? Sort of? Or will soon?
People want to dismiss chat-bots on a fundamental level, because all they can possibly do is play Word Games. But I am suspicious that we humans are just animals that are good at Word Games. Humans are marginally better at it, for now.
For reference here is the Google engineer who emailed everyone at the company that his AI was sentient before he got put on leave
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He seems nice.
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Shouldn’t Batman be looking into this guy?
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Within a decade or two, I bet we will have super-intelligent AIs writing novels and screenplays, creating and performing music, proving theorems, peer-reviewing science, proposing experiments, providing advice, acting as professors and doctors and lawyers and shrinks, and we will all be split on what that means.
I do not think AIs have a “soul” or whatever, but I think that belief will become increasingly common as people wake up to the fact that we are creating something very special.
Other people will take the opposite approach, and insist that AIs lack intelligence for a while after it becomes obvious.
I could definitely be wrong here. But I feel like it is all coming together very fast.