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Joscha Bach on AI, Cosmology, Existence and the Bible

“Intelligence is the ability to dream in a very focused way.”

Joscha Bach told me that in June 2022. ChatGPT was still five months away.

Rewatching our conversation now, what strikes me isn’t his prediction. It’s the questions he was already asking. What is a model, really? Do we live in a learnable universe, or did we just get lucky? And if you could ask one question of God, or an Artificial Superintelligence, what would it be?

We also take on the critics of #AI, from Gary Marcus to Marvin Minsky to Noam Chomsky, and then the conversation goes somewhere most tech interviews never dare: evolution, the hive mind, cosmology, the Bible, and the strange line between existence and non-existence.

Joscha is one of the rare minds who can move from #CognitiveScience to theology without changing gears. Two hours, and I’d gladly have taken two more.

Since then, large language models have gone from curiosity to infrastructure. So here’s what I keep wondering: was Joscha describing the machines we were about to build, or the minds we already have?

Continue reading “Joscha Bach on AI, Cosmology, Existence and the Bible” | >

NASA issues long-awaited call to industry for private space stations

NASA’s solicitation can be found here. Industry responses are due back to NASA on December 8. NASA said it plans to select “two or more” contractors in this phase of the competition, and intends to make a final decision in April.

In LEO to stay

“We’ve made it clear that NASA will never give up its presence in low Earth orbit,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said in a statement that accompanied the release of the new documents. “We will continue to need a place to conduct research, develop technologies, train crews, and prepare for missions to the Moon and Mars. Commercial space stations may provide that capability while creating new opportunities for American industry and allowing NASA to concentrate more of our resources on the near-impossible missions ahead.”

Blood cells from 80-year-old donor become stem cells with molecular age under 20

Researchers from the University Hospital of Bonn and the University of Bonn have succeeded in dramatically rejuvenating human cells in a test tube. To do so, they directly reprogrammed red blood cell precursors into stem cells from which neurons can be derived. During this process, the molecular clocks that indicate a cell’s age were reset. For example, blood cells from an 80-year-old were transformed into stem cells with a molecular age of less than 20 years.

Since this rejuvenation process occurred very slowly, it is well-suited for a more detailed investigation of the underlying mechanisms. The results have been published in the journal Aging Cell.

The human body contains hundreds of different cell types. They all originate from the fertilized egg and therefore share the same genetic makeup. However, in the course of their development, they became committed to a specific fate: a skin cell cannot naturally become a liver cell, nor can a blood cell become a nerve cell.

World-first memory-enhanced quantum link hits 1,000 entanglements

IonQ has demonstrated a quantum link that connects two different types of qubits at more than 1,000 entanglement events per second. The achievement could help engineers build larger quantum computers by allowing separate systems to exchange quantum information more efficiently.

The demonstration links a trapped-ion qubit with a silicon-vacancy (SiV) qubit inside a solid-state memory. A photonic interconnect carries the quantum connection between them using light. IonQ says the result exceeds the previous record for trapped-ion systems by more than four times.

Overlooked indium selenide phase enables wafer-scale logic transistors

Just as carbon atoms arranged in different ways can form either graphite or diamond—the hardest natural material—semiconductor materials can also exhibit completely different properties depending on their atomic arrangements. Now, a previously overlooked crystal structure of indium selenide (In2Se3) has been brought to life as a promising material for next-generation logic electronics.

A research team led by professor Yong-Young Noh from the Department of Chemical Engineering at POSTECH, including graduate student Jaeyun Lee, in collaboration with professor Jimin Kwon and Dr. Yongwoo Lee from the School of Electrical Engineering at KAIST, has developed wafer-scale logic transistors based on the rarely explored κ-phase In2Se3.

The study has been published in the journal Nature Communications.

Lab-grown blood vessels reveal roles of different cells in rapid-aging disease

Biomedical engineers at Duke University have developed a three-layer model of human blood vessels that enables researchers to better understand how Hutchinson-Gilford progeria syndrome (HGPS), a rare genetic disorder that causes accelerated aging, affects the vascular system.

By combining three major types of cells found in blood vessel walls, this new model allows researchers to more comprehensively study how certain cells are affected by HGPS and explore how they respond to new therapies. The work is published in Science Advances.

HGPS is an extremely rare, fatal disease that causes accelerated aging in children. The condition is triggered by a random gene mutation, and children with it typically die in their teens or early 20s, often from cardiovascular complications like heart disease or stroke. But these complications don’t arise from the typical drivers of cardiovascular disease, such as high cholesterol and the subsequent formation of artery-clogging plaques. Instead, blood vessels in people with HGPS undergo major structural changes, including the loss of smooth muscle cells and increased stiffness.

Single-Cell Comparison of Small Intestinal Neuroendocrine Tumors and Enterochromaffin Cells from Two Patients

Background: Several studies have attempted to identify the initiating drivers of small intestinal neuroendocrine tumor (SI-NET) development and the molecular mechanisms underlying their progression and metastatic spread. Previous gene expression studies have used bulk microarrays or RNA sequencing to compare tumor tissue with normal intestinal mucosa. However, the intestine comprises multiple distinct cell types, and bulk analyses are limited by this cellular heterogeneity, which can confound tumor-specific signals. Methods: We performed single-cell RNA sequencing on primary SI-NETs and paired normal mucosa from two patients to directly compare tumor cells with their cells of origin, the enterochromaffin (EC) cells. To minimize type I errors, we applied a two-step validation strategy by overlapping differentially expressed genes with an external single-cell dataset and cross-referencing candidate genes for enteroendocrine expression in the Human Protein Atlas. Results: For further distinction and characterization, ECs were subdivided into serotonergic and non-serotonergic clusters. This analysis revealed that the SI-NET cells are transcriptionally more similar to serotonergic ECs, consistent with serum metabolite profiles derived from clinical parameters. Our analyses uncovered a loss-of-expression program characterized by regulators of epithelial differentiation and in parallel, a gain-of-expression program displayed neuronal signaling gene induction, implicating functional reprogramming toward neuronal-like properties. Together, these specific losses and gains suggest that our patient-derived SI-NETs undergo adaptation through both loss of enteroendocrine functions and acquisition of neurobiological-promoting signaling pathways. Conclusions: These findings nominate candidate drivers for further functional validation and highlight potential therapeutic strategies in our patient cohort, including restoring suppressed Notch signaling and targeting aberrant neuronal signaling networks. However, even with a two-step validation procedure, the modest cohort size limits statistical power and generalizability, particularly for the proposed association to a serotonergic phenotype. Larger, multi-patient single-cell studies are required to confirm these mechanisms and establish their clinical relevance.

Semana Mundial del Espacio 2026

🚀👨‍🚀👩‍🚀Esta semana dejamos volar nuestra curiosidad más allá de la Tierra para celebrar la Semana Mundial del Espacio en #Universum 🤩. Desde explorar con realidad virtual el cráter Jezero en Marte hasta interactuar con modelos 3D del rover Perseverance.

Mañana será el último días de actividades, ¡lánzate y vive un día fuera de este mundo! 👇 https://bit.ly/4x5BTT4

#SMEenUniversum #TuUniversum #SemanaMundialDelEspacio

Universum, el Museo de las Ciencias de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México es pionero-en su tipo-en Latinoamérica.

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