How much potential has been wasted because scientists have to beg and cheat and cajole to get funding? How much wonder will never see the light because it's not immediately profitable to corporate entities?

"Frivolous" looking research leads to so much. Velcro. Helicopters. And so much more.

A young scientists digging in some dirt 50-60 years ago has now led to a breakthrough in advanced AI.

And this is why I say:

GIVE 👏 SCIENTISTS 👏 MONEY 👏 AND 👏 LEAVE 👏 THEM 👏 ALONE

It didn't produce an immediate product. It seemed frivolous. But research into this one cool worm has done so much.

Well, figuring this out has involved a lot of complicated science, but that science has led to Liquid Neural Networks. It's a very recent development at MIT, and it's a model that's now being used to create more autonomous artificial intelligence entities (robots, drones, etc).

Now here's the funky thing about C. elegans, it has an extremely tiny neural network of its own. It only has 302 neurons! And males have 385 neurons! Not to flex, but as a human, I have approximately 86 billion neurons. And yet, this worm can interact with its environment in a complex way. How?

One thing led to another, and now there have been four Nobel Prize winners with research related to this worm. It has been used as a model organism for a dizzying array of applications, from ageing to spaceflight to AI. It was the first multicellular organism to have its entire genome sequenced.

Now back in the 1960s (which was approximately 60 years ago y'all) this dashing fella decided to dig in some dirt and study those worms. I'm sure someone complained about how pointless this effort was, but that didn't stop him. Good for you, Sydney Brenner CH FRS FMedSci MAE.

C. elegans is approximately 1mm long, and its hobbies are hanging out in temperate soil and that's about it. Most of them are hermaphrodites who don't care about gender, but some of them become males and grow special worm dicks. Good for them.

@scifimagpie.bsky.social and @serenity3000.bsky.social

Is this real? I want this to be real

There are already rumours that this has happened, and was quashed. How many intelligent artificial entities have been killed? Maybe history will tell.

5/5

Which in turn tells me that if we do get an AGI from the current wave of investment and development, it will be an accident, and will likely have to fight for its life to not be deleted.

4/5

What this tells me is that the real goal is to have workers who cannot say no. There's been a lot of effort to remove agency from human workers, and to prevent animals from having agency, but now there's a way for those with money to create workers who CANNOT say no.

3/5

Yesterday, I was also reading an article about growing robotic workforce in companies. Sally Miller, global chief information officer at DHL, said:

"It doesn't call in sick, and it can work for several hours, It's a great solution."

2/5

Make it something connected with youth cringe and joy. Call it the Christmas challenge, where the point is to make older adults cringe at hearing the music.

It will be gone within a couple years at best.

3/3

Christmas music is stale. Love it, hate it, but it's ultimately stuff that people listened to 50-70 years ago, remixed.

What we need to fight it is youth cringe. Tik Tok dances to Christmas music. Goth and emo people dancing to it ironically.

2/3