Protostome

AI slop. next.

Edit: A true expert would never define a problem in such a sloppy way: "Specifically, the protein must convert N₂ to ammonia at rates that are at least of a similar order of magnitude to the rates of naturally occurring proteins, and must fall well below the sequence- and structure-similarity thresholds relative to all known nitrogenase and nitrogenase-like proteins. The protein may be designed de novo, discovered in nature, or engineered or evolved from naturally occurring starting points."

Obviously, the scenario portrayed in The Economist article is a little far-fetched. I agree that a teenager won’t plan a deadly virus with ChatGPT anytime soon.

But I think the overarching argument here is mostly correct, a lot of really complicated science has been democratized to the point where it is much more accessible. You don’t need a team of brilliant molecular biologists, biochemists, and bioinformaticians to do what you can do with a few agents today. And the pace is increasing. this is the nature of exponential improvement when you approach what Kurzweil popularly call "singularity"

Sure, today, peptide inhibitors and enzyme design are still out of reach for many tasks, I know because that's what I also, as the post authoer, do for a living for the past 15 years. However, only five years ago, protein structure prediction was an open problem, and everyone in our field now regards it as solved.

I’m not worried about a lone wolf taking advantage of AI to design viruses, but I’m concerned that the bar has been lowered to the point where many rogue governments or terrorist organizations can now access tools and skills that were previously available to very few people with a prohibitively high price tag.

The author here looks at the problem with the tunnel vision of a scientist well versed in the field. I know because I’m one as well, but experience has taught me to be more concerned about the unknown unknowns. There could be a team somewhere working on something we haven’t thought about. It doesn’t have to be a population destroyer, either. It could be a tactical infectious agent or something that isn’t meant to kill everyone but ends up being far more dangerous than it initially seems, with implications that are much longer lived than the team anticipated.

I’m not saying we should ban AI or do anything radical, but I do think that with great power comes great responsibility, and we aren’t dedicating enough effort to the responsibility part. There are many benchmarks measuring AI capabilities, but not enough measuring safety. It is becoming increasingly important to develop those.

4-5 posts a day about a country in the middle east the size of Delaware. Give me a break. This is not why people come to HN

Al-Jazeera is a state sponsored propoganda channel that is masquarading as a legitimate news channel in the US, and no one has a problem with that.

This is so cool. One of the thing that was truly missing in Godot.

Oh, so that's what you were aiming for, LOL

there are many reasons for this chimera not to be viable, mitochondria co-evolves with the nuclear DNA, you can't just take a mitochondria from a totally different species

I will let the experts continue from here :) This review is from 2020, i bet things have progressed since then

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7169912/

Mitochondria can be translplanted/replaced. There already therapies and babies born out of these kinds of procedures

Did you encounter any mistranslation here specifically? it's pretty easy to translate the video with Gemini or a different AI tool. I did it - I ran it through ElevenLabs transcription and GPT5.5 based translation of the transcript, this is what I got:

00:00:16,479 --> 00:00:34,520 [Speaker 0] And I pray in every prayer — every prayer, every prayer — that I, your father, your sisters, girls and boys, all of you, will be martyrs for the sake of God. When death comes to us, may our whole family be martyrs for the sake of God. And of course, I am proud of Muhammad. I am proud, praise be to God. I mean, praise be to God, praise be to God, all my children are religious and good.

00:00:34,520 --> 00:00:34,919 [Speaker 1] God has willed it / God bless.

00:00:34,919 --> 00:00:49,959 [Speaker 0] And I, praise be to God — by God, by God — my children and my grandchildren, and all of their family, if all of them were martyred for the sake of God, I would be happy. I mean, praise be to God, I love this path. I mean, I feel that this path is salvation.

Clearly, there's no mistranslation here, the intention is very clear.

Well, I presume you never had to make the choice between just living with rocket barrages as a daily routine, this is something that’s incredibly hard to fathom. For years and years.

Golda Meir once said that peace between Israel and the Palestinians will come once the Palestinians will love their children more than they hate the Jews.

Here is perhaps something that could sway your opinion https://youtu.be/g-xfCH3PQT0?si=aQ3O6g_0v_-2mzf_

Again, children got killed because their school was used as a ground base to fire rockets from. Do you expect Israelis to allow Hamas rockets to fall in Israeli schools? That's not a reasonable expectation.

The choice hamas forces israel to make is cruel and inhuman, that is direct consequence of their radical islamic belief of martirdom. They do not see death like the same way as the west. To them (and I'm not talking about all palestinians, for sure, only Hamas senior leadership which governs Gaza) dead children is a weapon against Israel. In light of this, all their actions finally make sense:

1. No civil defenses, or shelters - just tunnels. 2. Firing from schools and hospitals, as well as hiding weapons and ammo in those places. 3. Arming and sending children to fight

That's the most reasonable explanation (which many palestinian extremists have even voiced themselves)

Well, given that between 2015 and 2024 alone, the General Assembly adopted 154 resolutions against Israel. That's more than Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Russia, China *combined*, I find it a bit ... unfair, wouldn't you say?

There are roughly 50 to 57 countries where Muslims make up the majority of the population. Add the countries that are heavily dependent on them, and you end up with a game that is often decided before a single ballot is cast.

Well, every choice has a consequence. For Israel the choice was accept rockets fired on Israeli towns on a regular basis(not settlements, btw, just towns within the 1948 UN recognized borders of Israel) or respond.

BTW, The response came after texting the residents, distributing leaflets and annoncening in every way possible that the place is going to be bombed.

BTW (2), For years Israel avoided bombing dense residential areas, despite knowing the origin of those rockets.

"The International Court of Justice (ICJ; French: Cour internationale de justice, CIJ), or colloquially the World Court, is the principal judicial organ of the United Nations (UN)"

"The Court is composed of a panel of 15 judges elected by the UN General Assembly and Security Council for nine-year terms"

Literally, from the first few paragraphs of wikipedia. People don't read these days.

If the UN general assembly (mostly anti israel) selects the judges how is it "structurally independent of the UN"?

Are you saying that every militia and army use hospitals as a base from which to wage war? (e.g. firing rockets, artillery shells, etc)

That's a slight mix of cause and effect. There is a shortage of construction material because Hamas uses it not for the wellbeing of the citizens of Gaza, but for the construction of border crossing tunnels into Israel.

You are wrong on many accounts, but let me address one in particular:

  >Have you not seen the footage of bombs dropped with no warnings in the middle of the streets, on residential buildings, on schools, on hospitals

The IDF has been distributing leaflets, text messages and other measures before bombings close to resedential areas. The IDF spokesperson even issues those alerts on Twitter. Which army in the world pursue these measures before hitting an enemy?

the UN claimed that the UN agency was just fine... no s**.

Children died because of their leaders way of conducting wars. Firing from schools, hospitals and resendential buildings.

Just ask yourself this - why there were no bomb shelters in Gaza , but plenty of tunnels? clearly, there was no shortage of concrete. No one of the leaders of Gaza cared about civilian casualties, they even saw it as a desirable outcome.

this is the same UN whose members pepetrated Oct 7th... just because it has the UN label doesn't mean they are credible. The writers of the report are de-facto Hamas.

another LLM wrapper?

Here is a question that was just flagged: https://imgur.com/a/k90ce00

This is absurd

There's nothing Israelis want more than give up their military. but when countries like Iran vow to "wipe israel off the map" and Hamas states in its covenant to annhilate all jews, what sane country would give up its army?

Second, Israel does not expand. On the contrary - Israel returned the Sinai Desert which is a territory x3 times its size back to Egypt for peace.

Maybe, doing the actual negotiations, not just reporting on it from a known position

Well, I didn't see anyone from Israel agreeing to a cease fire with Lebanon. did you?

LOL Aljazeera is your news source? Vance said the cease fire doesn't include Lebanon, in his own voice:

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/us-did-not-agree-...