Artificial Ice/ Can Millions of Genetically Modified Trees Slow Climate Change?/ The ChatGPT King Isn’t Worried, but He Knows You Might Be

Artificial Ice. First of all: “Buona Pasqua” to everybody. I was not planning to, but two separate and independent articles made me want to go back to the recontextualization concept from last week and the ban on cultivated meat in Italy that triggered it.?

The first article is a?piece on cultivated meat in the Corriere della Sera, the major Italian newspaper, starting to articulate a very different narrative around cultivated meat, looking at the scientific facts and the problems associated with “natural meat”.

Reading the article immediately brought back a?guest post?by?Virginia Postrel?on a blog I follow (The Works in Progress) which I read earlier in the week. The post made me hope that, eventually, a more sensible attitude toward cultivated meat could emerge in Italy. I am focusing on Italy as a proxy for the part of the world that is either afraid of progress, or that is trying to defend the non-sustainable status quo.

The article is worth reading, and below are the key takeaways (courtesy of ChatGPT, with some edits and comments from my side):

While engaging with?a San Francisco startup called Wildtype, which grows sushi-grade salmon from stem cells, Virginia Postrel got exposed to the story of?"artificial ice" and how it was initially disparaged by??natural-ice“?magnates in the mid-19th century.?

NOTE: I never thought of the notion that the ice that we normally use is “artificial” as I always deemed it “natural”, in the sense that this is “ice” for me, and the fact that it is produced using energy and thus not naturally, never occurred to me.?

As a matter of fact, ?artificial ice“?was initially met with skepticism and disparagement by the??natural ice “?industry in the 19th century. The ice industry at that time claimed that artificial ice was not real ice and could carry disease (NOTE: It sounds incredibly similar to what the Italian farmers association is claiming…). However, the author argues that public suspicion fueled by natural-ice magnates did not seriously hinder the development of artificial ice. Instead, it took decades of technical innovation to lower the cost of refrigeration and make artificial ice a viable alternative to natural ice.?(NOTE: Which I think is the real issue when it comes to cultivated meat)

The author cites archives from the 19th century, which show a positive attitude toward artificial ice in newspapers of the time?(NOTE: is the article in the Corrriere della Sera the first step in that direction?). While the cost of freezing mixtures for artificial ice was initially high, the author notes that there was recognition of the potential benefits of artificial ice, especially in areas where natural ice was not readily available. Three decades later, the industry for artificial ice had taken off, and it was seen as a human triumph over the "clumsy and antiquated" natural ice.

The article goes on to mention that factory-made ice found a ready market among consumers who were concerned about water-borne diseases and tainted food in industrial cities. The demand for artificial ice was reportedly driven by consumers who were careful about the wholesomeness of their food and the general health of their homes, as well as by butchers who wanted pure ice for their ice chests.

The author concludes by noting that calling ice "artificial" actually made it more desirable to consumers at the time, as it was seen as a triumph of human ingenuity over natural limitations.?

The story of artificial ice serves as an example of how new technologies may initially face resistance and skepticism from established industries, but can eventually overcome these challenges through innovation and market demand.

As it is often claimed, history does not repeat itself, but it rhymes… let’s hope!

Can Millions of Genetically Modified Trees Slow Climate Change?

Could “genetically modified” poplar trees that “grow 50% faster and capture 27% more carbon” be a better option for decarbonizing the atmosphere than?Direct Air Capture?or?BECCS? SF startup?Living Carbon?has?raised $36M?to pursue the approach and is currently planting 5M of their GMO poplars - “the first widespread use of genetically modified trees in the US.”

According to CEO and Co-Founder Maddie Hall, formerly at OpenAI and?Sequoia Capital: “We can plant enough trees by 2030 to remove a gigaton of carbon.” Living Carbon’s “business model is to take advantage of incentives for carbon reduction provided by governments and nonprofits.” The company has targeted 133M acres of land “environmentally degraded from industrial or agricultural use” and will pay property owners a fee to plant its poplars.

Planting trees sounds like an elegant solution to carbon sequestration, but it’s not a slam dunk. “What Living Carbon is trying to do has never been done before at all,” said?Steve Strauss, Professor at?OSU?and Living Carbon research consultant. “It’s very bold, and I told them that... everything about this is high risk, in my view.”

News items:

Power From Plants? Newly Discovered Photosynthesis 'Leak' Means More Juice

Photovoltaic solar panels have around 20% efficiency in turning the sunlight they capture into electricity. By contrast, plants - via photosynthesis - have “near 100% efficiency in converting light to electrons.” An?imaging technique?that made “it possible to watch electrons as they move through the entire photosynthetic process” led to?research?with “major [positive] implications for the production of renewable biofuels… derived from plants or algae.”?

The ChatGPT King Isn’t Worried, but He Knows You Might Be

Unlike the 300M people whose jobs may soon be eliminated by automation (see below), OpenAI’s Sam Altman “isn’t worried” about GenAi “undercutting the job market. Or even destroying the world as we know it.” In response to the recent?open letter?signed by OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and thousands of others calling for a “pause on giant AI experiments [that pose]?profound risks to society and humanity,” Altman said, “The hype over these systems — even if everything we hope for is right long term — is totally out of control for the short term.”

In this in-depth NY Times portrait, Altman shares that he no longer owns a stake in OpenAI and only takes a yearly salary of around $65K - “whatever the minimum for health insurance is.” Though he’s cognizant of the existential risks Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) could pose for humanity, he also believes it will “bring the world prosperity and wealth like no one had ever seen.” And if AGI “eventually drives the price of human labor to zero?” Altman’s plan is that “OpenAI will capture much of the world’s wealth through the creation of AGI and then redistribute this wealth to the people.”

How? “I feel like the A.G.I. can help with that,” Altman said.

News items:

Goldman Sachs Says Generative A.I. Could Impact 300 Million Jobs — Here’s Which Ones

A?new report?from Goldman Sachs predicts GenAI could eliminate up to 300M jobs worldwide. “25% of work” in the US could be “automated,” with the most disruption occurring in office and administrative support (46% task automation), law (44%), and architecture and engineering (37%).

European Innovation Council: New Group of Deep Tech Start-Ups to Receive Accelerator Investments With Increase in Women-Led Start-Ups

32 companies?were recently selected by the?European Innovation Council?(EIC) from an [Accelerator Open](https://eic.ec.europa.eu/eic-funding-opportunities/eic-accelerator-0_en#:~:text=EIC Accelerator Challenges-,eic accelerator open,-Overall budget (2023)?call to receive over $213M (€196M) in funding from “a combination of grants and equity investments.” 40% of the companies have a female as CEO or other C-Suite position - “the highest share to date.”

The startups were chosen from 476 applications, and 159 companies made it to the next round to be “interviewed by juries of experienced investors and entrepreneurs.” The selected companies were spread across 14 countries. and “94% of recommended funding” went to beneficiaries in EU member states. Examples include?BEIT?(Quantum computing, Poland),?Naco?(Green hydrogen nanotech, Latvia), and?Inossia?(Biotech, Sweden).

News items:

Bacterial ‘Nanosyringe’ Could Deliver Gene Therapy to Human Cells

Bacterial nanosyringe (green) binds to insect cells (blue) prior to injection of payload proteins.

A 100-nanometer-long “molecular syringe” found in a parasitic “bioluminescent bacterium” inside a worm found “inside the gut of a caterpillar” inspired?new research?that could allow gene editors to “inject large proteins” into human cells. “This is a very good example of unearthing from natural biological dark matter items of interest that have practical use and that are good enough to be deployable,” says?Rodolphe Barrangou, Professor at NC State and Editor in Chief atThe CRISPR Journal.

X’s Astro Teller on Managing Moonshot Innovation

In a recent interview,?Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots at “Alphabet’s dedicated innovation factory,”?X, sat down with HBR’s?Allison Beard?to discuss what’s next.

With?notable projects?including?Waymo,?Google Glass, and?Google Brain?in the rearview mirror, X, co-founded by Teller, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin in 2010,?now operates?as an independent Alphabet company. According to Teller: “X’s mission is to invent and launch breakthrough technologies that can help tackle a huge problem with the world and create the foundations for large sustainable businesses for Alphabet. Right now, we’re largely focused on sustainability.”

One current “moonshot” is?Tidal, which could help preserve ocean life and significantly “expand ocean farming” to help address the growing?global food crisis. Teller says, “Humanity gets several trillion dollars a year of value from the oceans, and we’re killing the oceans faster than we’re killing our land or our air. We have to stop. [We need] to get more value from the oceans while regenerating [them through] automation.”

News items:

Generative AI Will Enhance — Not Erase — Customer Service Jobs

Unlike most “other major innovations, [the] adoption and evolution of GenAi tech will [occur] almost simultaneously and be continuously disruptive.” Using customer service as an example, the authors of?Radically Human?argue that GenAI will “enrich - not erase jobs, [and] create a new set of human work tasks - many of them of higher value.”

Pausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down

A?six-month pause?on “training AI systems more powerful than GPT-4” isn’t nearly enough.?Eliezer Yudkowsky,?author and co-founder at the?Machine Intelligence Research Institute?(MIRI), says the only way to prevent the threat of “horrifically dangerous technology which can have no true owner and which will kill everyone… on Earth” is to shut down “new large [AI] training runs… indefinite[ly] and worldwide.”

Yudkowsky isn’t bemoaning jobs potentially lost to automation from current “human competitive” LLMs like GPT. His fear is “what happens after AI gets to smarter-than-human intelligence” - and we may not even know it when it happens. There are?numerous ways?AGI can lead to “ruin.” And?many experts?believe “that the most likely result of building a superhumanly smart AI, under anything remotely like the current circumstances, is that literally, everyone on Earth will die.”

News items:

When Healthcare Is Decided by Algorithms, Who Wins?

Over?22M Americans,?overwhelmingly over 65, rely on?Medicare Advantage?(Medicare C) for their healthcare needs. Medicare Advantage is offered by government-approved private insurance companies that administer recipients’ medical and prescription drug claims, among other things. Increasingly, those companies are using?algorithms?absent of human intervention to evaluate if patients are “worthy of care.” And to deny it.?Algorithmic tools?are also being used “to pinpoint the precise moment when [private insurers] can shut off payment for a patient’s treatment.”