I think a large part of my lack of enthusiasm comes from my belief that advances in artificial intelligence are going to make human-run biology irrelevant before long.
I suspect that’s the issue, and I suspect AI will not be the Panacea you expect it to; or rather, if AI gets to the point of making Human-run research in any field irrelevant—it may well do so in all fields shortly thereafter, so you’re right back where you started.
I rather doubt it will happen that way at all; it seems to me in the forseeable future, the most likely scenario of computers and biology are as a force multiplier, allowing processes that are traditionally slow or tedious to be done rapidly and reliably, freeing humans to do that weird pattern-recognition and forecasting thing we do so well.
I should be clearer on that score. It’s not that I see a high likelihood of a singularity happening in the next 50 years, with Skynet waltzing in and solving everything. Rather I see new methods in Biology happening that render what I’m doing irrelevant, and my training not very useful. An example: lots of people in the 90s spent their entire PhDs sequencing single genes by hand. I feel like what I’m doing is the equivalent.
I suspect that’s the issue, and I suspect AI will not be the Panacea you expect it to; or rather, if AI gets to the point of making Human-run research in any field irrelevant—it may well do so in all fields shortly thereafter, so you’re right back where you started.
I rather doubt it will happen that way at all; it seems to me in the forseeable future, the most likely scenario of computers and biology are as a force multiplier, allowing processes that are traditionally slow or tedious to be done rapidly and reliably, freeing humans to do that weird pattern-recognition and forecasting thing we do so well.
I should be clearer on that score. It’s not that I see a high likelihood of a singularity happening in the next 50 years, with Skynet waltzing in and solving everything. Rather I see new methods in Biology happening that render what I’m doing irrelevant, and my training not very useful. An example: lots of people in the 90s spent their entire PhDs sequencing single genes by hand. I feel like what I’m doing is the equivalent.