Dominik Türk, Boostzone Institute – AI Masks the Silent Revolution in Biology – Strategies and Management

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is all over the news, especially with the emergence of LLM students with growing abilities that seem exponential to us. It will change the way we work and be productive, create new jobs and change some of them. But another science will soon change our daily lives, our society, and our businesses to at least as much extent: biology. While AI somehow changes the way we work from the inside, as computer science or electricity did before, biology will impose itself from the outside, causing revolutions and innovations that will affect our personal and social lives and therefore our lives . ways of work.

Biology is a vast zoo of many animals, some more powerful than others, but all of which have a powerful influence in the future. Let’s look at a few examples, but make no mistake: this is not science fiction, it’s just a matter of timing.

New vaccines are emerging, mRNA or not, that will eradicate more and more diseases, even some types of cancer. Will they have the same impact on populations, public health and healthcare stakeholders as the first vaccines or antibiotics? Probably. The world’s population has increased from 1.7 billion in 1900 to 8 billion today, and life expectancy has increased from 45 to more than 80 years. Biology is no stranger to these revolutions that underlie all of our current environmental problems.

Analysis of the genome of living beings, humans, animals or plants, and the possibility of modifying it, in particular through techniques such as CRISPR, leads to an understanding of characteristics, relationships and sensitivities. Therefore, the selection and modification of species will progress, including ours. We will be able to have the children we want, for example protected from genetic diseases, and even with the characteristics we want them to have. The door is open to people, animals and “augmented” plants. Animal and agricultural species will quickly be destroyed by new GMOs. The labor market and the marriage market among people will also change quickly.

Epigenetics, the science that analyzes the influence of the environment on genetic mutations, will revolutionize knowledge and, in particular, precautionary principles. These may include stressful conditions, small particles, endocrine disruptors, and various chemical and non-chemical products. Today, a substance is considered responsible (for example, for cancer) if, statistically, people exposed have more cancer than others. Tomorrow, the analysis of connections between genes and substances will become serious evidence. The risks of having to change or remove products, business models and operating environments are significant.

Our DNA is unique and lasts from our birth to our death. Unlike our fingerprint (which changes depending on our activities and expires quite quickly), it is eternal. It soon became known to many, and it opened the door to intrusive marketing measures to understand who you are, what to offer you, for your own good, of course… and into various aspects of social life, ranging from the control of your identity to the marriage market. , to insurance, etc.

Understanding the mechanisms of aging will likely make it possible to slow it down in the medium term. Altos Lab, a startup focused on this project, raised $3 billion in 2022 and attracted top scientists to its network.

In the even longer term, biocomputers are not ready yet, but we are working on it. Their big advantage will be high energy efficiency. Our brain consumes about 20 watts to perform much better than a cat’s GPT, which is already considered a significant polluter due to its electricity consumption.

These different animals will significantly change our society, our lives, our health, our work, our social relationships, our attitude to ethics. But, unlike AI, this science and the technologies that arise from it do not appear suddenly, but gradually, in accordance with the advances of science, and if they seem slow on a societal scale, in fact they are very fast and their impact, application after application , is truly stunning. Human DNA was only deciphered in 2001, CRISPR scissors were invented only in 2010, and mRNA began to be used as a carrier for vaccines only in 2020.

Business strategy will be impacted at all levels: human capital management, market relations, choice of components used, regulatory management, risk management and, of course, ethics.