From Lunar Arks to AI Breakthroughs: Leading Change in Science and Society
Scientists propose a lunar "Noah's Ark" to preserve Earth's biodiversity, while AI advancements, like detecting cancer years ahead and new image models, continue to innovate, illustrating how leading by example in tech and ethics can inspire transformative change.
Strap in for this week’s cosmic ride through the latest and greatest in innovation and leadership.
We’re zooming from lunar horizons to AI revolutions - all served up in the bite-sized, high-energy morsels you love.
Thing 1 - 🌙 A Lunar Noah's Ark: Preserving Earth's Biodiversity in Space
We might have a future where Earth's most precious genetic treasures are tucked away on the Moon.
Scientists are proposing a groundbreaking concept: a lunar "Noah's Ark" to preserve the DNA of endangered animals and plants. Mary Hagedorn's project aims to create a cryogenic biorepository on our celestial neighbor.
Why?
To safeguard our planet's incredible biodiversity against:
- Climate change
- Habitat destruction
- Other human-induced dangers
🥶 The Lunar Deep Freeze
The Moon's frigid polar regions, with temperatures below -196 °C, serve as the perfect deep freeze for animal skin and tissue samples. These genetic time capsules could remain intact for centuries!
🚀 Why the Moon?
- Cosmic insurance policy against disasters
- Backup to current safeguards (like Norway's Svalbard Global Seed Vault)
- Potential for lower maintenance costs
Challenges Ahead
- Developing radiation-proof packaging
- Solving lunar transportation
- Global collaboration among scientists, engineers, and policymakers
- Establishing international governance and ethical standards
🔬 Beyond Biodiversity
This moon-shot (love me some puns) idea isn't just about protecting Earth's species. It's pushing the boundaries of cryobiology and could teach us volumes about sustaining life beyond our home planet.
Thing 2 - AI of the week
- AI detects breast cancer 5 years before it develops
- Canva announced the acquisition of LeonardoAI
- Reddit acquired Memorable AI
- The founding members of Stable Diffusion started Black Forest Labs and released FLUX.1 - a suite of text-to-image models that define a new state-of-the-art in image detail
- Meta introduced SAM 2 - state of the art image segmentation model
- Midjourney released V6.1
Thing 3 - Lead by Example: How Your Actions Inspire Change
It's a bit sad to think of all the high school kids turning their backs on building treehouses and sitting in class dutifully learning about Darwin or Newton to pass some exam, when the work that made Darwin and Newton famous was actually closer in spirit to building treehouses than studying for exams.
- Paul Graham
I think a lot about personal improvement and becoming a better person.
With children, there's almost a blank slate and ample time to mold and form. You'd think that we'd develop systems to take the opportunity of that.
And yet our system (education system, for the lack of a "raising" system) is more optimized for creating a piece of machinery (I do think it creates more than a cog) than a complete human being.
Perhaps this is due to the "we're all our unique snowflake" but perhaps there's more to it.
The silver lining I see in all this is that children learn A LOT through modeling behavior they see. This means you can do something about it.
Behave in a way you think more people should behave.
Do the right thing.
Be the change you wanna see in the world.
Because they are watching. Even if you don't notice. And they are copying.
Even if they are not your kids.
Cheers, Zvonimir