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For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

quantamagazine.org

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Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#151

Post by psyphy2 »

cperciva wrote: post #119
oliverx0 wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crazy that a Cell reviewer would claim synthetic biology is not biology

My paper demonstrating a side channel attack on RSA via hyperthreading was rejected from the crypto preprint archive on the basis that it was "not cryptography". (Reviewers at J.Crypto subsequently sat on it for a year and then suggested I submit it to a journal on CPU microarchitecture instead.) Novel research is uniquely susceptible to "cool but it's not part of our field", because that critique is entirely correct…

I'm not familiar with your work, but a more arch venue does sound like more appropriate to me as someone from arch?

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#152

Post by ahmedfromtunis »

xpct wrote: post #135
ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #78

You stumble upon a news article from 2226. You read it to see who, between Google, OpenAI and Anthropic, won the AI race. Instead, your learn about Biotic. It's now the leading polity in the solar system and its environs. It bought Alphabet, OpenAI and Anthropic in a single day back in 2084. Humans are no longer desired. Their reproduction is capped to an optimal minimum assuring the survival of the species as a reli…

Interesting thought experiment, but I don't see why automating machines that build and repair other machines wouldn't be sufficient. At the limit, such a machine would be able to repair itself, or repair other long-running machines. I imagine it would come down to wear and efficiency loss.

Manufacturing requires micromanaging every aspect of the process, requiring special machinery, trained workforce (human or not), inventory management.

Reproduction, once we master its blueprint of course, is much less demanding: just provide the ingredients at approximate proportions and the chemistry will work its magic to provide a similar enough unit to achieve the required task.

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#153

Post by commieneko »

whycome wrote: post #148
commieneko wrote: post #139

Interesting. I pasted the article URL into Claude Opus 4.8, along with some questions about uses for cells that couldn't reproduce and Claude thought about it for a while, and then got murdered by the guardrails. I was invited to edit the question and try again; in a different chat. Or use a dumber model. I suppose I can see why. But at the time I was just curious about the idea of "mule" cells.

What are the guardrails here?

I've read than even a lot of high school biology questions can set off safety guardrails on Claude.

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#154

Post by gus_massa »

dnautics wrote: post #127
burnte wrote: post #3

Interesting that this is led by the same Dr. Kate Adamala who ended the right-handed-proteins experiment a couple of years ago. Given how close she was I'm not surprised she's made this work.

the left handed life thing is the only thing that makes me wonder about Adamala's judgement... there zero plausible mechanism for left handed life to succesfully compete. in case you didn't know, your immune system WILL detect left handed pathogens, possibly more aggressively, and two of the body's mechanisms for fighting infection -- fever and ozonolysis -- are distinctly achiral Arguably we should push for mirror l…

I agree. Nitpicking:

> (they got nothing to eat)

They can eat fats, that are not chiral.

Perhaps they can eat some carbohidrates, all carbohidrates are chiral, but some bacterias may eat some of the unusual carbohidrates too. But amino acids are beyond any possibility, and fixating nitrogen is hard, so I also think they will starve to death very fast.

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#155

Post by IshKebab »

jschveibinz wrote: post #147
Maxion wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife has had numerous papers rejected because the reviewer belonged to a competing lab. Took a few tries and a request to exclude a certain reviewer and hey presto! published!

That is despicable behavior from a professional. How common is this in academia?

Hard to say but my impression is that most academics are honest and would try not to do this, but also there are rivalries between labs and that tends to encourage "everything they do is bad and we're great" mentalities so it's definitely not surprising.

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#156

Post by bradley13 »

commieneko wrote: post #139

Interesting. I pasted the article URL into Claude Opus 4.8, along with some questions about uses for cells that couldn't reproduce and Claude thought about it for a while, and then got murdered by the guardrails. I was invited to edit the question and try again; in a different chat. Or use a dumber model. I suppose I can see why. But at the time I was just curious about the idea of "mule" cells.

Which shows why guardrails on AI are just dumb. What harm could come from answering your question? None.

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#157

Post by libraryatnight »

commieneko wrote: post #153
whycome wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the guardrails here?

I've read than even a lot of high school biology questions can set off safety guardrails on Claude.

I'm curious what you asked? I had Opus 4.8 ingest the URL and give me some ideas about what's possible and it eventually got to AI and self repairing/improving factories along with listing risks etc.

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#158

Post by IshKebab »

whycome wrote: post #148
commieneko wrote: post #139

Interesting. I pasted the article URL into Claude Opus 4.8, along with some questions about uses for cells that couldn't reproduce and Claude thought about it for a while, and then got murdered by the guardrails. I was invited to edit the question and try again; in a different chat. Or use a dumber model. I suppose I can see why. But at the time I was just curious about the idea of "mule" cells.

What are the guardrails here?

They're paranoid about people using AI to synthesise anthrax or something. You also can't ask it how to build a nuclear bomb.

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#159

Post by ben_w »

hparadiz wrote: post #120
Aerolfos wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, that is the IAU stance. And their definition for exoplanet includes small, non-rounded objects orbiting stars which would be asteroids (or comets or whatever) if they happened to be around the Sun. All that debacle around dwarf planets to prepare for future observations, and yet the distinction ceases to apply the moment you go outside the Oort cloud... But really, that's just the naming systems being bad,…

I'm not talking about edge cases like asteroids or planetoids or dwarf planets. I'm talking about actual planets. Like a gas giant orbiting a star. It's obviously a planet even if it's not orbiting Sol.

It's perfectly coherent to argue that gas giants should count failed stars rather than as planets, given the boundary between them is under debate.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WISE_0855%E2%88%920714

Re: For first time, a cell built from scratch grows and divides

#160

Post by ben_w »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #146
Maxion wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My wife has had numerous papers rejected because the reviewer belonged to a competing lab. Took a few tries and a request to exclude a certain reviewer and hey presto! published!

Were these open reviews? Many times they are blinded, so unless they revealed their identity, you would not know.

When the number of people is small enough, it's not too hard to figure out the identity of supposedly anonymous people.

I've done that once in an anonymous chat group with about 35 people in it.

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