Open Thread 346

This is the weekly visible open thread. Post about anything you want, ask random questions, whatever. ACX has an unofficial subreddit, Discord, and bulletin board, and in-person meetups around the world. 95% of content is free, but for the remaining 5% you can subscribe here. Also:

1: ACX commenter Metacelsus is a Harvard bio PhD who the excellent De Novo blog; he also reviews most ACX posts and grants on biology for me. He recently co-founded a startup, Ovelle, to commercialize his academic work on gametogenesis (turning arbitrary cells into eggs). If this worked, it could replace the complicated and invasive egg harvesting process of IVF with a simple blood draw or mouth swab. But beyond that, it would allow women to circumvent menopause by creating eggs at any age (women can safety become pregnant well into their 50s, they just lose the ability to create eggs naturally), and maybe (this is still speculative) allow gay couples to have biological children. And with a couple of extra steps, you could turn this into a supercharged version of embryo selection that could essentially end all genetic disease (existing techniques don’t give you enough rerolls for more than incremental gains). This technology already works in mice, and some companies (including one backed by Sam Altman) are working on translating it to humans - but IIUC Metacelsus is coming from an academic lab that’s gotten significantly further. Ovelle is looking for people who want to invest or work for them (remember, investing in biotech is a minefield best left to professionals, and working in biotech is terrible and soul-sucking). You can contact them here.

2: I’m interested in holding some kind of AI art Turing test, but I’m not good enough at AI art to do this myself (when I try, the images come out in an obviously AI-ish style, in a way that I’ve seen other AI art users avoid). I was hoping to get a few pictures in the style of old masters, modern art, etc and juxtapose them to real paintings of the same category which are too obscure for most people to recognize. If you think this would be a fun challenge, email me at scott@slatestarcodex.com. I can at least compensate you for the cost of the AI image generation, and I’m open to negotiating more substantial payment.