This week’s podcast is sponsored by Scientist.com.
The mainstream media in the past couple of months has picked up on artificial intelligence (AI). The coverage concentrates not so much on its uses, more it highlights the potential for conflict, and fears over AI developing too quickly, or ‘taking over humanity.’
Debates have sprung up around deepfakes, ChatGPT, and other AI technologies. There are also concerns over how new technology will impact our everyday lives. The debate covers ethics, regulations, law, education; AI and the future seem intertwined.
In fact, artificial intelligence has been around for some time. It has evolved, and the potential uses have grown, to the point where it is more in the spotlight today. There are many positives to AI, not least in the life sciences. We now have the potential to analyze far more data. And there is real potential for identifying new drugs and drug targets. Of course, AI has other applications in science, such as climate change and sustainability, and in food technology.
AI and machine learning were just some of the topics Labiotech discussed in a wide-ranging conversation with Mark Kotter, CEO of U.K. biotech company bit.bio.
bit.bio
bit.bio is a synthetic biology firm providing human cells for research, drug discovery and cell therapy. The company applies a safe harbor gene-targeting approach to inducibly express transcription factor combinations that reprogram human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) into highly defined and mature human cell types.
The company is currently building a clinical pipeline and marketing a range of cells and disease models for research and drug discovery under its ioCells brand. This includes nerve cells, immune cells and muscle cells.
bit.bio was spun out of the University of Cambridge in 2016. It has since raised $150 million capital from Arch Ventures, Foresite Capital, Milky Way, Charles River Laboratories, National Resilience, Tencent, and Puhua Capital, among others.