Synthetic Biologist - Foundry Theorist - American Wetware - stay humble biodesigners
Cambridge, MA
Based in United States
- Tweets 13,906
- Following 445
- Followers 18,314
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Shout out to new england gotta be one of my favorite climates to read a book indoors on a rainy weekend
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Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc retweeted
Massachusetts absolutely cooking right now. Hub of the universe.
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"Run entirely by AI" is just hype for unserious tech-brained people who can't pay attention to anything less important than the end of the world
That said - I've been using AI tools to manage protocols, inventory and lab notes. There are real productivity gains to be had
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Not to brag but my wife could get me out of a third world prison between zoom calls
People say that Jeff Bezos met his first wife by asking around about “please introduce me to a woman who could get me out of a third world prison if necessary”
and like I totally get this. My kingdom for a partner who would respond to the news that I was in a third world prison, not by being like “what has this headstrong lady gotten herself into” but instead by just being like *sigh, roll up sleeves* “okay how are we getting her out”
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Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc retweeted
Dark Forest era for math & theoretical science?
Wow, I just found out that our team has been scooped by @AnthropicAI
anthropic.com/research/yes-c…
See the addendum of the post “How does it feel to be scooped by a machine?” written by my collaborator Lance Dixon (who was under NDA while checking the result)
I’m still processing, but not entirely surprised. I do I wish we had the time in the resources to commit to it.
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Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc retweeted
So the same lead author (Peter Yoon) published a Science paper about a new viral repeat system (VIPR) and also this Anthropic ART paper. If this was all Claude's work, is it just a coincidence that the same human was a lead contributor to both?
Claude has discovered a previously unknown enzyme system hidden in the DNA of bacteriophages. Beside the enzyme’s gene sits a long array of repeating DNA—a structure that looks somewhat similar to CRISPR.
We don’t yet understand what this system does, but only a handful of known systems share its features, and all of them are able to cut, copy, and paste DNA. Historically, the discovery of such programmable systems has helped revolutionize medicine. CRISPR, for instance, is now the foundation of genetic medicines. But it will take much more work to learn what this system does, and whether it can be put to similar use.
Read more: anthropic.com/news/claude-di…
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My prompt evading 17 bioterrorism threat classifiers content safety guardrails and runtime security protocols to discover the forbidden knowledge of how much salt goes in a pH buffer solution
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Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc retweeted
This was ~3 orders of magnitude fewer tokens than OAI spent on Navier-Stokes. In bio most questions need experimental verification before proceeding. It’s interesting to think about whether there are trillion token questions in bio that don’t need experiments in the loop
Claude has discovered a previously unknown enzyme system hidden in the DNA of bacteriophages. Beside the enzyme’s gene sits a long array of repeating DNA—a structure that looks somewhat similar to CRISPR.
We don’t yet understand what this system does, but only a handful of known systems share its features, and all of them are able to cut, copy, and paste DNA. Historically, the discovery of such programmable systems has helped revolutionize medicine. CRISPR, for instance, is now the foundation of genetic medicines. But it will take much more work to learn what this system does, and whether it can be put to similar use.
Read more: anthropic.com/news/claude-di…
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I don't think this is a fair economic comparison.
Grad students aren't CROs. They aren't the fastest or cheapest way to do science and they aren't meant to be.
When the public pays a grad student salary, the main thing they get in return is a trained scientist. The data is a byproduct.
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Jake Wintermute 🧬/acc retweeted
I'm scoping a program around ambitious research projects in AI for physical systems. Who are the genius people in this space that I should talk to?
👇 Tag your favorite smart humans and/or share your favorite papers below, or RT for reach 👇
Some examples of what I'm interested in:
- Distributed learning and swarming
- Adaptive behavior in the absence of connectivity
- Novel algorithms for sensor integration into digital twin or cyber-physical simulations
- New capabilities in edge AI for physical systems
- New modalities for AI control of emerging robotics (bio-inspired or hybrid components)
- Next gen robotic manufacturing based on mass customizability and intuitive learning
- Breakthroughs in the development of training data that prepare physical AI systems for real-world variability
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Biotech VCs and executives love competition. You can tell them “Compete harder” and they will agree with you. The problem is that those people will not decide this issue.
You have to tell American patients “you should pay all the profits for an industry based in China, while people in every other country get the same drugs for 1/3 the price.”
If you think American politicians can sell that message, then outsourcing biotech to China is a great idea and will increase profits. If you think that message won’t work, then outsourcing biotech kills the industry.
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