By Haddon Libby
With the start of a New Year, we have many things to look forward to with anticipation. Some of these events are darker and more challenging and remind us of the great divides and challenges facing society. Other events and advancements offer a brighter future than at any point in the existence of humankind.
A recent innovation is the perfect example of the opportunity and challenge facing us – Generative Artificial Intelligence aka GenAI.
Generative artificial intelligence broke free of the research labs and into the mainstream in 2023. This happened as NVIDIA designed a semiconductor that has the processing power capable of powering GenAI. This chip sells for $40,000 and is banned from export to China by the United States.
As we enter 2024, GenAI is being deployed in business and society in fascinating but rudimentary ways. As an example, I asked Microsoft Bing to create a visual representation of what GenAI would look like if it was a visual object. The picture with this article is Bing GenAIs’ attempt to help us understand what it looks like.
While this innovation may be in its infancy, this baby is learning quickly and about to change life as we know it. Its impact on society should rival the Industrial Revolution as it should impact every aspect of life as we know it. As a reminder, prior to the Industrial Revolution, society was Agrarian, or agriculture based. GenAI is that big.
If we think back to when the Internet began some twenty-five years ago, it has moved from a basic communication tool to what we know it to be today. COVID sped up the work at home movement while Netflix led the way on streamed video content and Amazon made at home shopping easier and less expensive than going to the store.
GenAI needs the computing power of a supercomputer powered by chips like those made by NVIDIA in order to work to its fullest potential. A supercomputer performs at speeds 1 million times faster than a laptop.
Keith Figlioli of LRVHealth says that 2024 will be the year where GenAI moves from the testing phase to the production phase. GenAI will use confidential health information in developing medicines and treatments. GenAI initially will initially be deployed in the areas of radiology and pathology as its ability to read and analyze tests is better and more accurate than humans.
GenAI is likely to play a big role in the development of CRISPR gene editing. CRISPR is an acronym for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindronic Repeats. The idea here is that cell therapies will treat a wide spectrum of diseases including cancer. What happens is that a protein is injected into the body that hunts down bad DNA sequences, neutralizes with spacers, and recodes with the corrected DNA sequence – sort of like how you would fix bad code in a computer.
While great advancements in all areas of life are expected as GenAI rolls out, the development of the Quantum computer will be what helps GenAI advance CRISPR gene editing at an even faster pace and with better outcomes.
Quantum computing is based on quantum physics. As a refresher, quantum physics is the study of matter and energy at the most fundamental and basic level. This includes the ability to understand electrons and protons. This has helped in developing lasers, MRI machines and semi-conductors. Ultimately, it is thought that a quantum computer will help in unlocking how everything in the universe works by reviewing areas of knowledge that we cannot comprehend. Where a current computer must have its coding translated to 1’s and 0’s, a quantum computer does not need this simplistic programming language.
The future is bright so long as we don’t blow ourselves up along the way.
Haddon Libby is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer to RIA firm Winslow Drake Investment Management. For more information on our services, please visit www.WinslowDrake.com or drop me a note at hlibby@winslowdrake.com.
