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Personally, when I think of biotech, I think of gene editing, growing organs in a vat, etc. I would tend to put brain-computer interfaces in a different categor
by tachyonbeam 6y ago
Personally, when I think of biotech, I think of gene editing, growing organs in a vat, etc. I would tend to put brain-computer interfaces in a different category.
That being said, I think that biotech is not progressing much because there's a lot of regulations slowing down research, and nobody has really demonstrated a "killer app" yet. I think what could happen, is that we will eventually be able to use gene therapy to really effectively kill cancers, and then funding is just going to pour into the field at 50 times the current rate.
There's a lot of other cool things we could do with gene editing, like fixing incurable depression, life extension, fixing genetic diseases, curing irritable bowel syndrome and dangerous allergies, but there's currently not enough funding, and there's not enough excitement, people are too worried about "ethical" implications.
I think it might be similar with brain-computer interfaces. Someone needs to spend a lot of money to get the first version working. It's possible that Elon Musk will win that race with Neuralink. If we can have a brain implant that allows a paraplegic person to move a robot arm, send texts and make themselves dinner... 10 years later you will have disabled people walking with exoskeletons and hackers hooking themselves up to computers. It could all happen within our lifetime. We just need someone to make that first killer demo, then funding pours in, 100 startups pop up overnight, and innovation really takes off.
- smolder 6y agoI think the idea that regulation is slowing down research is a bit too simplistic to the point of being misleading. It's important to consider how regulation comes about, how that process shapes the regulation, how research gets funded, and so on. Our modern economic landscape of conglomeration over competition is important. It came about in part because of regulation, but repealing regulation would not undo it and return us to a Renaissance of competitive independent businesses. This strained, rigid, highly interconnected economy has made it so that only the big institutions can afford to take substantial risks, and already being the giant wealth funnels that they are, there's little incentive to take those risks. The greater the share of the economy made up by giant interconnected businesses with an aligned profit motive, the less risk taking, disruption, and innovation there will be. You shouldn't need to be Elon to be entrepreneurial at the cutting edge, but you do, because you can't compete with Elon. You shouldn't need to have Amazon's resources, but you do. Looser regulations are moot.