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by ben_w 1078 days ago
> So what we have ongoing for half a century?

Except fully automated, cheaper, and with the capacity to fluently respond to each and every person who cares about the topic.

At GPT-4 prices, a billion words is only about 79800 USD.

> Life can’t be “won” by intelligence, that is only one factor, luck being a very significant other one.

It doesn't need to be the only factor, it just needs to be a factor. Luck in particular is the least helpful counterpoint, as it's not like only one person uses AI at any given moment.

> Especially biology is massively data-limited, which won’t be any more available to an AI than to the researchers at hand, let alone that teenager.

Indeed; I certainly hope this isn't as easy as copy-pasting bits of one of the many common cold virus strains with HIV.

But homebrew synbio and DNA alteration is already a thing.