AI is the first real fundamental advance since the Internet went public. Looks like they’re trying to head it off and lock it down right away this time.
CRISPR-cas9 is a pretty strong competitor.
CRISPR is a revelation fundamental in the machinery of cells, and gives an analog of unix sed.
To your point, it will be interesting to see if transformer architecture implementations, or theory, is widely enough recognized as fundamental advancement in science to merit the analog (Fields medal, no way, or Turing Award, maybe) of the at least 2 Nobel prizes awarded for Crispr-Cas9.
I would argue that AI has grabbed orders of magnitude more headlines in the past 6 months.
And AI is pretty damn profound, so I’m struggling to grasp the point this comment is making.
the point is that headlines are one thing, but they don't evaluate impact of a technology very well, though they do evaluate hype.
i question, is AI getting so much enthusiasm because the ideas are more widely accessible, have been prominent in sci-fi for 50 years (at least), whereas hardcore genetics tools, and recent discover of how to effect surgery on DNA as code, is appreciated by a smaller audience?
I mean, look at the sophistication required to appreciate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISPR_gene_editing
and pretty clearly that's a hardcore hacker effort realized in biology, and it won 2 Nobel prizes as assessed not by headline count but by the world of scientists, and that in under 10 years, which basically is amazing.
disclaimer: i come from a foot in both worlds background, so I am mega enthused (like you) about the transformers results, as well as 'computing' in genomics.
i wonder if the two worlds will soon collaborate, by the way.
People at the companies may or may not want to do this for selfish reasons, but regardless, have been basically forced to "ask" for regulation, or face that regulation being applied against them as an existential threat to the business.
Meta seems to have possibly gotten around this through having their model "leaked", but I am not sure what else can be expected at this point. I am hopeful that community efforts will be able to make progress quickly enough so as to make regulatory capture seem more difficult.