Joining the Technological Frontiers

(MENAFN- Daily Outlook Afghanistan) Artificialintelligence (AI) and biotechnology are both on an exponential growthtrajectory, with the potential to improve how we experience our lives and evento extend life itself. But few have considered how these two frontiertechnologies could be brought together symbiotically to tackle global healthand environmental challenges.
Consider the pace ofrecent developments in both fields. Biotechnology, in cost-benefit terms, hasbeen improving by a factor of ten every year. The cost of deciphering the humangenome has dropped from $3 billion in 2001 to about $1,000 today; a processthat took months ten years ago can now be completed in less than an hour.Likewise, based on current developments, PricewaterhouseCoopers estimates thatAI's contribution to global output will reach $15.7 trillion by 2030 – morethan the current combined output of China and India.
Yet, if anything,these predictions underestimate the economic impact. AI applications willeventually be so broad and so embedded in every aspect of our daily lives thatthey will likely contribute three to four times more to global output than theInternet, which today accounts for around $50 trillion of the global economy.Moreover, the siloed nature of current analyses means that potential AI/biotechcombination technologies have not been fully considered or priced in.
For example,combination technologies could tackle a global health issue such as organdonation. According to the World Health Organization, an average of around100,800 solid organ transplants were performed each year as of 2008. Yet in theUnited States, there are nearly 113,000 people waiting for a life-saving organtransplant, while thousands of good organs are discarded each year. For years,those in need of a kidney transplant had limited options: they either had tofind a willing and biologically viable living donor, or wait for a viabledeceased donor to show up in their local hospital.
But with enoughpatients and willing donors, Big Data and AI make it possible to facilitate farmore matches than this one-to-one system allows, through a system of pairedkidney donation. Patients can now procure a donor who is not a biological fitand still receive a kidney, because AI can match donors to recipients across amassive array of patient-donor relationships. In fact, a single person whosteps forward to donate a kidney – either to a loved one or even to a stranger– can set off a domino effect that saves dozens of lives by resolving themissing link in a long chain of pairings.
Since the firstpaired kidney exchanges took place in 2000, nearly 6,000 people have receivedkidney transplants from donors identified by algorithms. But this could be justthe start of AI-facilitated organ transplantation. AI can already identifypotential donors and recipients; in the future, it will be able to account foreven richer patient data, perhaps including moral and religious factors, tohelp with sequencing and triage decisions (that is, determining whether someoneshould get a transplant before someone else).
The biggest hurdlepreventing these AI models from reaching their full potential is biological. Intheory, AI applications could draw on data sets encompassing all living anddeceased organ donors and all patients worldwide. But, in practice, there is atime limitation on most organ pairings, because organs from deceased donors areviable for transplantation for only a short period. To be paired, recipientsmust be located within a geographic radius that can be reached in time.
Fortunately,synthetic biotechnology could vastly expand the scope of feasible pairings.Globally, the synthetic biology market is growing fast, and is expected toexceed $12.5 billion by 2024, reflecting a compound annual growth rate of 20%.Within this emerging industry, there are companies (including one in which I aman investor) exploring methods of preserving and even regenerating organsoutside of the body, potentially for multiple days at an ambient temperature.This could extend the distances that organs can be transported, thus enabling anetwork effect by increasing the size of viable data pools from which AI modelscan draw to produce more efficient chains of pairings.
Perfecting newbiotechnologies usually takes years. But, if successful, these innovationscould revolutionize large areas of public health, with the globalorgan-donation regime being just the start.
The moral and ethicalimplications of today's frontier technologies are far-reaching. Fundamentalquestions have not been adequately addressed. How will algorithms weigh theneeds of poor and wealthy patients? Should a donor organ be sent to a distantpatient – potentially one in a different country – with a low rejection risk orto a nearby patient whose rejection risk is only slightly higher?
These are importantquestions. But I believe that we should get combination technologies up andworking, and then decide on the appropriate controls. The matching power of AImeans that eight lives could be saved by just one deceased organ donor;innovations in biotechnology could ensure that organs are never wasted. Thefaster these technologies advance, the more lives we can save.
AI and biotech areundergoing rapid development precisely because they have such far-reachingpotential. As they move forward, we must keep looking for new combinations tounlock. I suspect that we will find we have underestimated their potential byconsidering them in isolation.

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