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THE OBSTACLE. “My own view is that the history of artificial intelligence suggests that the biggest bottleneck on the path to AI is software, not hardware: we have to find the right algorithms, and no-one has come close to finding them yet.” https://lnkd.in/e335knp View in LinkedIn

ON BALANCE. “Good (1965) predicts an ultraintelligent machine by 2000, Vinge (1993) predicts greater-than-human intelligence between 2005 and 2030, Yudkowsky (1996) predicts a singularity by 2021, and Kurzweil (2005) predicts human-level artificial intelligence by 2030. Speaking for myself, I would be surprised if there were human-level AI within the next three decades.” https://lnkd.in/e335knp View in LinkedIn

OTHER OPINIONS. “Still, it may be useful to note that none to few experts expect AI within five years, whereas many experts expect AI by 2050 or 2100.” https://lnkd.in/dAZH9Vg View in LinkedIn

ONE VIEW. “Machine intelligence will, more likely than not, appear within a century, even if the progress rate to date does not strongly suggest the next few decades.” http://intelligence.org/files/AIFoomDebate.pdf View in LinkedIn

SO ENDS this first of two weekends focused on prions. Can an aberrant host protein that evolves, has no DNA, and forms distinct strains be called a species, or even a separate life form? In the standard book of biology, the answer is no. Our understanding of life diversity is blindfolded by dogma, and if we want to find life beyond Earth, we had better wake up to what is under our very noses. View in LinkedIn

PRION STRAINS. “In support of the virino hypothesis is the existence of different strains of prions that cause differing patterns of disease and breed true; the existence of strains in pathogens is usually the result of changes in the nucleic acid sequence of the infectious agent.” https://lnkd.in/dkdVKcb View in LinkedIn

VIRINO CONCEPT. “Some researchers believe that the prions are formed when PrP associates with a foreign pathogenic nucleic acid. This is called the virino hypothesis. Viruses consist of proteins and nucleic acids that are specified by the virus genome. A virino would also consist of proteins and nucleic acids, but the protein component is specified by the host genome, not the pathogen genome.” https://lnkd.in/dkdVKcb View in LinkedIn

NEW TYPE OF DISEASE. “The mounting experimental evidence has generated great interest in what appears to be a totally new kind of mechanism of disease.” https://lnkd.in/dkdVKcb View in LinkedIn

DUMB PROTEIN? “We now know that a normal cellular protein, called PrP ( for proteinaceous infectious particle) and which is found in all of us, is centrally involved in the spread of prion diseases. This protein consists of about 250 amino acids.” https://lnkd.in/dkdVKcb View in LinkedIn

INFECTIOUS AND HEREDITABLE. “Confusingly, researchers also recognized that some prion diseases, such as GSS, were inherited. The pattern of inheritance was recognized as being autosomal and dominant, meaning that if a parent developed GSS, there was a 50 percent chance that a child of either sex would also develop the disease.” https://lnkd.in/dkdVKcb View in LinkedIn