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by lanstin 5 days ago
That would only be physically possible if all the data about biology was accessible. Given we routinely find new biological facts that contradict prior beliefs about how cells work, it seems likely that this day of total biological information access by humans and our creations is some time off. Reasoning ability is a limit sometimes, but we have had reason for a long long time - a solid persistent corpus of good data about the mechanical details of cells and planets and chemistry is also needed, along with a good method for validating existing ideas. LLMs will absolutely speed this up, but I can’t quite see how they will replace it.
1 comments

That bothered me decades ago, when I heard people suggesting we no longer needed animal trials, we could just simulate human biology for testing.

Don't get me wrong, the way we collectively treat animals is evil, but the idea that somehow we know enough about biology even today to reliably simulate drug behaviors seems unlikely.