Welp, that settles it. I’ll just have to live forever.

For what it’s worth, a lot of synthetic biologists are looking into Carbon Concentrating Mechanisms (e.g. carboxysomes) so that we can improve carbon capture in native plants. Honestly, as a protein engineer / synthetic biologist myself there’s even odds I could end up working on it too; though, it’s not my first choice.

I’m pretty sure short-sightedness is more a result of patience and critical thinking, but outdoors might help near-sightedness.

Maybe, Idk. I don’t worry too much about definitions as long as I can figure out what’s physically happening they don’t matter.

Honestly, I think other countries should just block US citizens from traveling until we at lest put the CDC back together. Just like, a minimum standard. Or maybe put US Citizens in quarantine for some period.

Wtf, no. Lots of animals can tolerate both bacteria and parasites that humans can’t. Just touching armadillos can give you leprosy. Even if you gut animals correctly, many (e.g. bears) have internal parasites that’ll kill you dead.

Eh, while it’s nice to say that science is all about method and nothing is above being questioned, at a certain point there’s so much evidence that it’s insane to argue against them. Like, I’m fine saying more than just germs cause disease or that not all germs cause disease, but saying there are no germs that cause disease when we the mountains of evidence we currently have is insane. It’s a lot like saying gravity doesn’t exist. Like you can argue that maybe gravity is a niche case or a product of a particular frame of reference, but things still fall down. We know that, it’s unquestionable.

You should post this on biophysics too.

Yeah, I think this is conversation is entering the just try to build it territory, but definitely worth a try.

There’s !localllama@sh.itjust.works

Thanks. I’ll have to get through my current project, but this will be a good resource when I do more on LLMs.

Rich people can be fools, and a fool and his money are soon parted. That’s why much of the economy is just everyone trying to scam everyone else.

I think it’s very much a “how much data on this exist” sort of problem for most of these. Like I can pick out bacteria from fungi on an augur plate trivially, but I don’t know if there are databases of augur plates characterizing different growths with different background colors and all the diversity that real life has. Honestly, I haven’t tried this yet. It might be able to get it just fine or might be able to get it if I backlight the plate - of course, at that stage there are other programs for detecting colonies.

The dream, for me, is to get it to understand the protein structure files and DNA sequence files then hook it up to some lab robotics and automate experiments that are mostly trivial but slightly dynamic. Maybe start with something simple like cloning then build out to other methods. Some of this stuff exists already but companies charge you a fortune and go out of business (or get bought up and discontinued) constantly, so it kinda needs to be stuff I can build and maintain myself – or FOSS.

Even for purely computer stuff, anytime I try to get the AI to help with my proteins, it’s functionally useless because it doesn’t have a way to “see” the protein’s structure file. I can write my own scripts to help with that, but I’ll have to work on the connection between the language the AI thinks in and the actual things my code detects. Or maybe I can tell it to ask questions based on the writing then run code that analyzes the protein to give answers to specific questions… Even then, much of what I’d want help with looking at proteins is how to write analyses of points in 3D space, and while it has helped me pick the right algorithms (sometimes), I’m haven’t really been able to give it enough information to let it check that things are being implemented correctly (I think this is alignment). That might something like hooking it up to pymol (3D viewer) or it might just be a bit too dumb. It’s hard to say without trying it, and it’s a lot of work for something it’s likely to get get confused about even with the ability to “look” at the protein structure.

I feel like, for coding, one thing I’m going to have to get it to do is stop after it makes a function or something so I can check that it’s still going where it’s supposed to go or tell it what the next function needs to do. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll start with lots of hand holding then slowly build it up until it can reliably do more or I can’t get it to be reliable enough. Maybe there’s a coding community on lemmy that’s a decent place to talk shop on how to build these scripts up and what local models are good at what?

Is there a solution to this whole government censorship problem? I don’t know networking, but it seems like the centralized systems get the central nodes shut down and the decentralized systems are too easily tracked and/or too inefficient. Reticulum looked interesting, but it was still pretty traceable, and appears to only really be for messaging apps since you have to know where you’re sending to already. Your motion idea has some merit to it, but I was kinda hoping for something more on the software side.

Yeah, I was thinking about the code too. I think the looping output explanation makes a lot of sense and puts the “Agentic AI” into a healthier/more-realistic framework.

I’m a lot more inclined to write my own loops than trust someone else’s AI, but with that framework I’m not sure how useful these “AI agents” will be for most non-text based problems since that’d require converting back and forth between text based mediums and whatever medium the problem is in which seems very problematic. For code I could try giving prompts to catch typos, makes tests, and improve functions. Even this seems pretty limited since usually the AI can’t see the larger picture identify the problem and plan a solution on its own. Or maybe it can in some contexts, but not the stuff I’m working on – maybe my work isn’t routine enough, Idk. I have been using it find learn algorithms and get numpy notations, but it just doesn’t grasp what math needs to be done when I try to explain my problems.

I’ll have to think more on how to set up loops that are more generally useful and won’t require more work in making it sure it’s doing what I want it to do than work it gets done.

I apologize if the context/background comes off as an agenda. It’s not that I’m trying to convince people one way or another, but I am concerned the anti-AI sentiment may be causing people to dismiss useful tools. I was attempting to provide some of my thoughts including that concern as context to my more general question of what I might need to do to properly utilize the tools.

If it helps, I agree that you shouldn’t spend any money on anything AI. To me, most “generative” AI is like a programming package. NumPy is a genuinely a really big deal, and coding without it is foolish, but people who don’t code shouldn’t worry about it. It’s not yet clear to me where AI agents fall as a tool in the world, and I’m genuinely trying to work that out. It might be useful purely as a coding tool – at the very least I think I want to try it as a coding tool. I’m also a biologist so I’m very keen to use robots to automate routine tasks – not sure if the AI will be a tool to build that automation or be a part of it.

I’ve also seen the multiple sub AIs thing. I think they have tools too, but there is definitely an element of that.

there would mechanisms in place to educate

Could you imagine if he was quietly black sited and came back from lake laogai all “there is no war in ba sing se” upstanding citizen?

Also, I think this is more vocational training anyway, so probably not far off from the educational system you want anyway.

Bless you

Eh, give it twenty years.

In that order or …?

Very true, failed to turn Vance away from evil though.