If AI is the answer, what was the question?
What? Technology has historically “exploded” the available pool of information.
Artificial Intelligence follows in the footsteps of historical inflection points like the printing press, digital computers, and genetics in its potential to significantly alter the trajectory of human history.
Before 1440 CE, there were about 30,000 books in Europe. By 1500, there were more than 9 million books, thanks to Johannes Gutenberg’s printing press, which democratized the accessibility of information and expanded the quantity of information available beyond that which could be consumed by any individual.
In 1959, IBM delivered the 1401 computer, generally considered to be the first commercially successful computer with over 12,000 delivered. It cost $500K ($5.26M today), weighed about 4 tons, and had a clock speed of 87 kHz. Today, there are more than 18 billion mobile devices worldwide that fit in a back pocket, costing $1,000k or less, with a clock speed more than 5 million times faster than the 1401 and capable of communicating instantly worldwide via more than 8 million apps.
The Human Genome Project, standing on the shoulders of researchers Gregor Mendel, James Watson, and Francis Crick, took 13 years to complete (1990 – 2003), cost $2.7 billion, and delivered a first rough first draft of the human genome. Today, you can sequence your entire genome in 2 days for approximately $250, information that collectively represents a gold mine for research and individually as a key to unlock truly personalized medicine.
So What? Benefits are maximized when we convert information to understanding.
Each of these technologies has fundamentally altered the trajectory of human experience and created the industries, organizations, and jobs necessary to enable them. But each technology also produced valuable data in volumes that challenge us to absorb and utilize this explosion of information with a human brain that has not changed in 100,000 years.
Artificial Intelligence is a technology capable of enabling us to understand and utilize this everincreasing reservoir of information. Leveraging it, however, will require competence in both AI and information technology as well as subject matter expertise to incorporate AI into each of the relevant realms of society.
Now What? Technology enablers are the sustainable key to that conversion.
In 2022, Pradeep Palazhi, Sam Santhosh, and Dan Peterson began to explore how blending their collective experience in information technology and genetics might meaningfully enable digital biology with artificial intelligence in the areas of biotech research and human health, which became ThinkBio.AI, an organization capable of addressing the question, “How can biotech and human health organizations incorporate and leverage AI into their existential missions?”
Today, ThinkBio.AI is working with organizations like Manus Bio in research and the commercialization of synthetic biology, Alstonia on the creation of synthetic antibodies as potential cures for diseases like cancer and auto-immune disease, Simisco in accelerating fundamental antibody research, discovery, and engineering, as well as other research and healthcare organizations changing the way they can take responsible advantage of the power and benefits of artificial intelligence.