I'll be giving the talk below to an audience of oligarchs in Los Angeles next week. This is a video version I made for fun. It cuts off at 17min even though the whole talk is ~25min, because my team noticed that I gave away some sensitive information :-(
A Brief History of the (Near) Future: How AI and Genomics Will
Change What It Means To Be Human
AI and Genomics are certain to have huge impacts on markets, health, society, and even what it means to be human. These are not two independent trends; they interact in important ways, as I will explain. Computers now outperform humans on most narrowly-defined tasks, such as face recognition, voice recognition, Chess, and Go. Using AI methods in genomic prediction, we can, for example, estimate the height of a human based on DNA alone, plus or minus an inch. Almost a million babies are born each year via IVF, and it is possible now to make nontrivial predictions about them (even, about their cognitive ability) from embryo genotyping. I will describe how AI, Genomics, and AI+Genomics will evolve in the coming decades.
Short Bio: Stephen Hsu is VP for Research and Professor of Theoretical Physics at Michigan State University. He is also a researcher in computational genomics and founder of several Silicon Valley startups, ranging from information security to biotech.
A great ~20 minutes starting at ~1:01 with UFC 155 contender Kevin Lee. Lee talks about self-confidence, growing up in an all-black part of Detroit, not knowing any white people his age until attending college, getting started in wrestling and MMA. If you don't believe early environment affects life outcomes you are crazy...
They also discuss Ability vs Practice: 10,000 hour rule is BS, in wrestling and MMA as with anything else. Lee was a world class fighter by his early twenties, having had no martial arts training until starting wrestling at age 16. He has surpassed other athletes who have had intensive training in boxing, kickboxing, wrestling, jiujitsu since childhood. It will be interesting to see him face Khabib Nurmagomedov, who has been trained, almost since birth, in wrestling, judo, and combat sambo. (His father is a famous coach and former competitor in Dagestan.)
Here are some highlights from Lee's recent domination of Edson Barboza.
Science writer Philip Ball, a longtime editor at Nature, writes a sensible article about the implications of rapidly improving genomic prediction for cognitive ability.
Philip Ball is a freelance science writer. He worked previously at Nature for over 20 years, first as an editor for physical sciences (for which his brief extended from biochemistry to quantum physics and materials science) and then as a Consultant Editor. His writings on science for the popular press have covered topical issues ranging from cosmology to the future of molecular biology.
Philip is the author of many popular books on science, including works on the nature of water, pattern formation in the natural world, colour in art, the science of social and political philosophy, the cognition of music, and physics in Nazi Germany.
... Philip has a BA in Chemistry from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Physics from the University of Bristol.
I recommend the whole article -- perhaps it will stimulate a badly needed discussion of this rapidly advancing area of science.
The study of the genes which affect intelligence could revolutionise education. But, haunted by the spectre of eugenics, the science risks being lost in a political battle.
... Researchers are now becoming confident enough to claim that the information available from sequencing a person’s genome – the instructions encoded in our DNA that influence our physical and behavioural traits – can be used to make predictions about their potential to achieve academic success. “The speed of this research has surprised me,” says the psychologist Kathryn Asbury of the University of York, “and I think that it is probable that pretty soon someone – probably a commercial company – will start to try to sell it in some way.” Asbury believes “it is vital that we have regulations in place for the use of genetic information in education and that we prepare legal, social and ethical cases for how it could and should be used.”
... Some kids pick things up in a flash, others struggle with the basics. This doesn’t mean it’s all in their genes: no one researching genes and intelligence denies that a child’s environment can play a big role in educational attainment. Of course kids with supportive, stimulating families and motivated peers have an advantage, while in some extreme cases the effects of trauma or malnutrition can compromise brain development.
... Robert Plomin of King’s College London, one of the leading experts on the genetic basis of intelligence, and his colleague Sheila Walker. They surveyed almost 2,000 primary school teachers and parents about their perceptions of genetic influence on a number of traits, including intelligence, and found that on the whole, both teachers and parents rated genetics as being just as important as the environment. This was despite the fact that 80 per cent of the teachers said there was no mention of genetics in their training. Plomin and Walker concluded that educators do seem to accept that genes influence intelligence.
Kathryn Asbury supports that view. When her PhD student Madeline Crosswaite investigated teachers’ beliefs about intelligence, Asbury says she found that “teachers, on average, believe that genetic factors are at least as important as environmental factors” and say they are “open to a role for genetic information in education one day, and that they would like to know more”.
... But now it’s possible to look directly at people’s genomes: to read the molecular code (sequence) of large proportions of an individual’s DNA. Over the past decade the cost of genome sequencing has fallen sharply, making it possible to look more directly at how genes correlate with intelligence. The data both from twin studies and DNA analysis are unambiguous: intelligence is strongly heritable. Typically around 50 per cent of variations in intelligence between individuals can be ascribed to genes, although these gene-induced differences become markedly more apparent as we age. As Ritchie says: like it or not, the debate about whether genes affect intelligence is over.
... Genome-wide polygenic scores can now be used to make such predictions about intelligence. They’re not really reliable at the moment, but will surely become better as the sample sizes for genome-wide studies increase. They will always be about probabilities, though: “Mrs Larkin, there is a 67 per cent chance that your son will be capable of reaching the top 10 per cent of GCSE grades.” Such exam results were indeed the measure Plomin and colleagues used for one recent study of genome-based prediction. They found that there was a stronger correlation between GPS and GCSE results for extreme outcomes – for particularly high or low marks.
... Using GPSs from nearly 5,000 pupils, the report assesses how exam results from different types of school – non-selective state, selective state grammar, and private – are correlated with gene-based estimates of ability for the different pupil sets. The results might offer pause for thought among parents stumping up eyewatering school fees: the distribution of exam results at age 16 could be almost wholly explained by heritable differences, with less than 1 per cent being due to the type of schooling received. In other words, as far as academic achievement is concerned, selective schools seem to add next to nothing to the inherent abilities of their pupils. ...
Intelligence researcher Stuart Ritchie interviewed by genomicists Razib Khan and Spencer Wells. Highly recommended! Thanks to a commenter for the link.
For mysterious reasons, this old tweet has attracted almost 200k impressions in the last day or so:
Nature, Nurture, and Invention: analysis of patent, SES, IQ data from Finland. "IQ matters more than all family background variables combined" ... "IQ direct effect ... almost five times as large as that of having a high-income father"https://t.co/O6txxW4tTLpic.twitter.com/YN8EWzWqcZ
If you like that tweet, this one might be of interest as well:
Low SES does not decrease heritability of cognitive ability (N=300k). PNAS, editor J. Heckman, 24k twins! "largest study to date... matched birth and school administrative records... no evidence of SES moderation of genetic influence on test scores..." https://t.co/KGIFiwzOrfpic.twitter.com/rHvqA1eUSa
I'm always amazed that so many people have strong opinions on topics like Nature vs Nurture, How the World Works, How Civilization Advances (or does not), without having examined the evidence.
Bloomberg Technology: SenseTime Group Ltd. has raised $600 million from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and other investors at a valuation of more than $3 billion, becoming the world’s most valuable artificial intelligence startup.
The company, which specializes in systems that analyze faces and images on an enormous scale, said it closed a Series C round in recent months in which Singaporean state investment firm Temasek Holdings Pte and retailer Suning.com Co. also participated. SenseTime didn’t outline individual investments, but Alibaba was said to have sought the biggest stake in the three-year-old startup. ...
Highly recommended -- covers the matches with European Go Champion Fan Hui and 18 time World Champion Lee Sedol. It conveys the human side of the story, both of the AlphaGo team and of the Go champions who "represented the human species" in yet another (losing) struggle against machine intelligence. Some of the most effective scenes depict how human experts react to (anthropomorphize) the workings of a complex but deterministic algorithm.
Wikipedia: After his fourth-game victory, Lee was overjoyed: "I don't think I've ever felt so good after winning just one game. I remember when I said I will win all or lose just one game in the beginning. ... However, since I won after losing 3 games in a row, I am so happy. I will never exchange this win for anything in the world." ... After the last game, however, Lee was saddened: "I failed. I feel sorry that the match is over and it ended like this. I wanted it to end well." He also confessed that "As a professional Go player, I never want to play this kind of match again. I endured the match because I accepted it."
I wonder how Lee feels now knowing that much stronger programs exist than the version he lost to, 4-1. His victory in game 4 seemed to be largely due to some internal problems with (that version of) AlphaGo. I was told confidentially that the DeepMind researchers had found huge problems with AlphaGo after the Lee Sedol match -- whole lines of play on which it performed poorly. This was partially responsible for the long delay before (an improved version of) AlphaGo reappeared to defeat Ke Jie 3-0, and post a 60-0 record against Go professionals.
Wikipedia: ... Ke Jie stated that "After humanity spent thousands of years improving our tactics, computers tell us that humans are completely wrong... I would go as far as to say not a single human has touched the edge of the truth of Go."
In this video interview, Ke Jie says "I think human beings may only beat AlphaGo if we undergo a gene mutation to greatly enlarge our brain capacities..." ;-)
Last year I was on an AI panel with Gary Kasparov, who was defeated by DeepBlue in 1997. (Most people forget that Kasparov won the first match in 1996, 4-2.) Like Lee, Kasparov can still become emotional when talking about his own experience as the champion representing humanity.
It took another 20 years for human Go play to be surpassed by machines. But the pace of progress is accelerating now...
Wikipedia: In a paper released on arXiv on 5 December 2017, DeepMind claimed that it generalized AlphaGo Zero's approach into a single AlphaZero algorithm, which achieved within 24 hours a superhuman level of play in the games of chess, shogi, and Go by defeating world-champion programs, Stockfish, Elmo, and 3-day version of AlphaGo Zero in each case.
Some time ago DeepMind talked about releasing internals of AlphaGo to help experts explore how it "chunks" the game. Did this ever happen? Might give real insight to scholars of the game who want to "touch the edge of truth of Go" :-)
