This means that the reactions you can do are limited to what organic compounds can do at relatively low temperatures—and existing life can pretty much do anything useful in that category already.
We find that bacteria sometimes do manage to work at higher temperatures as well. Thermus aquaticus that gave us Taq polymerase works for example at higher temperatures than most other bacteria.
Generally, it’s very hard for eukaryotes or prokaryotes to evolve the usage of new amino acids. It’s unclear what we could do with artificial designed proteins when we open up the range of amino acids further.
Simply changing the way proteins are coded allows immunizing bacteria against existing phages. Phages are a key reason we have the current diversity of bacteria.
I understand Eliezer Yudkowsky thinks that someone a little smarter than von Neumann (who didn’t invent the “von Neumann architecture” or half the other stuff he took credit for, but that’s off topic) would be able to invent “grey goo” type nanobots.
Eliezer model is that an AI with that intelligence will self-improve from “a little smarter than von Neumann” to “a lot smarter than von Neumann”
We find that bacteria sometimes do manage to work at higher temperatures as well. Thermus aquaticus that gave us Taq polymerase works for example at higher temperatures than most other bacteria.
Generally, it’s very hard for eukaryotes or prokaryotes to evolve the usage of new amino acids. It’s unclear what we could do with artificial designed proteins when we open up the range of amino acids further.
Simply changing the way proteins are coded allows immunizing bacteria against existing phages. Phages are a key reason we have the current diversity of bacteria.
Eliezer model is that an AI with that intelligence will self-improve from “a little smarter than von Neumann” to “a lot smarter than von Neumann”