A Molecule Designed by AI Exhibits ‘Druglike’ Qualities

Gregory Barber | Wired

“Lots of people are designing machine learning pipelines to produce virtual molecules, but relatively few have published research validating the work in the lab. Insilico’s work takes an extra step forward, AlQuraishi adds, in showing that its AI can be tailored to generate molecules that not only bind to a particular target, but behave well in cells and animals.”

Biohackers Are Pirating a Cheaper Version of a Million-Dollar Gene Therapy

Alex Pearlman | MIT Technology Review

“i‘This was developed in a shed in Mississippi, a warehouse in Florida, a bedroom in Indiana, and on a computer in Austria,’ says Gabriel Licina, a biohacker based in South Bend, Indiana. He says the prototype gene therapy cost less than $7,000 to create.”

Soft Self-Healing Materials for Robots That Cannot Be Destroyed

Evan Ackerman | IEEE Spectrum

“…fixing things involves a human first identifying when they’re broken, and then performing a potentially skill, labor, time, and money intensive task. SHERO’s soft materials will, eventually, make this entire process autonomous, allowing robots to self-identify damage and initiate healing on their own.”

Bell’s Self-Flying Drone Hauls a Heavy Load

Eric Adams | Wired

“It weighs 300 pounds and can carry an additional 70 pounds of cargo, slung in an aerodynamic pod between its two wings. …It first started flying in December via remote control, and in the past three weeks began fully autonomous flight…”

Coming Soon to a Battlefield: Robots That Can Kill

Zachary Fryer-Biggs | The Atlantic

“In the next decade, missiles will fly near the Earth at a mile per second, too fast for humans to make crucial defensive decisions on their own. Drones will attack in self-directed swarms, and specialized computers will assault one another at the speed of light. Humans might create the weapons and give them initial instructions, but after that, many military officials predict, they’ll only be in the way.”

Image Credit: Pierre Châtel-Innocenti / Unsplash