/ News
Google Translate's Lead Scientist Is Going to Help Conquer Death
Google, it turns out, doesn't have a monopoly on the ambitious goal to conquer death. In fact, the tech giant just lost one of its top computer scientists to a genetics startup called Human Longevity, which is working to achieve exactly what the name implies.
It's the latest project being spearheaded by Craig Venter, the biologist famous for being one of the first to sequence the entire human genome. Now, armed with advanced technology that brought the price tag and time suck of genome sequencing way down, Venter's team will sequence tens of thousands of genomes every year.
The firm will also sequence the genomes of the trillions of microbes that live on and inside the body—bacteria, viruses, and fungi—and integrate that into the data. The hope is that the resulting torrent of genetic information could hold the key to preventing disease and slowing aging—if someone can figure out how to decipher the massive database. Or more accurately, teach a machine to do it.
And that's why Human Longevity announced yesterday it's hired the former head of Google Translate, Franz Och, to develop new computational tools and algorithms to translate the bio data into actionable insights—like developing personalized medicine, early diagnosis, cures for killers like cancer and heart disease, and eventually stem cell therapies.
In a way, interpreting the jumbled DNA letters that make up our genetic code is a lot like translating a language. Each sequenced genome is made of some 3 billion As, Cs, Gs, and Ts strung together.
“Imagine the genome as a book written without capitalization or punctuation, without breaks between words, sentences, or paragraphs, and with strings of nonsense letters scattered between and even within sentence,” Genome News Network explains. “Even in a familiar language it is difficult to pick out the meaning of the passage.”
Indeed, it would be impossible for humans to crack the code; it’ll take an intelligent machine to analyze the data and unlock the biological secrets hidden inside. "Your genetic code translates into your biological code which translates into you," Venter told U-T San Diego, where the startup is based. "We need to use machine learning to find associations between genes that mere mortals can’t find from staring at the data. It’s too complex."
Of course, analyzing big data is Google's bread and butter. Google Translate can instantaneously translate text to 80 different languages using data-based machine learning, with relative accuracy. The machine is fed hundreds of thousands of documents previously translated by humans and learns to recognize patterns to apply to future translations. The more data it's fed, the better it gets.
Meanwhile, while the genetics company is busy writing algorithms, Google is gearing up to do some genome sequencing of its own. Venter's startup sprung up just seven months after Google Calico launched, a venture project that’s also setting out to fight aging with technology.
Then, last week, Google announced its Baseline Study, which will collect the genetic information from 175 people (later thousands) to create a comprehensive picture of what a normal, healthy human should look like. The idea is, once you have a clean slate it's easy to pinpoint disease biomarkers as health deteriorates.
Google staffed up with biologists to lead the projects and will sequence anonymous genomes for the purpose of the research. In the future, it could also leverage the onslaught of data streaming in from wearable fitness gadgets and health apps. When announcing the Baseline Study, the company offered assurances that the data wouldn't be used for commercial purposes and would stay anonymous, but the project is raising privacy flags anyway, and for good reason.
Venter, for instance, made no such promises, and in fact is open to selling the genetic information and insights to, say, pharmaceutical companies. He’s poured some $30 million in startup capital into the company already (the fancy Illumina machines that make it possible to sequence a genome super-quick cost a million each; Human Longevity bought 20).
But the money-making potential of the elusive fountain of youth is just about impossible to overstate. The race to kill death is on.
Source: http://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/read/google-translates-lead-scientist-is-going-to-help-conquer-death
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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