In vivo.

In vitro.

In silico.

The big three latin-derived terms that describe where scientific experiments take place, specifically biological research.

In vivo means within the living, which is simply experiments performed in a whole, living organism: animals, plants, or humans.

In vitro, latin for “in glass,” means experiments done in a lab, with test tubes, petri dishes, flasks, and cultures.

In silico, technically not a latin word, just a play on the other two, means in silicon, referring to computer chips. Experiments and modeling performed on computers using mechanistic or AI models.

I have a big hypothesis that within 15 years they all become one.

A world where the boundary between the biological substrate and the computational substrate dissolves, and where a simulation is not just modeling biology, it becomes biology. Swapping a kidney for a synthetic equivalent, or a neuron for a silicon chip, is routine and, dare I say, full brain simulation where I can copy myself into a system and still be myself.

In Omni.

In Omni is still at least 15 years away. We should likely see it take shape in the 2040s.

In my last video, I talked about how disabilities should not exist and would not exist in the future and I also talked about two projects I have been working on: Antroph Robotics and Biosimulant.

Antroph asks what happens when you emulate biology by embodying artificial intelligence into the physical world with robotic artifacts and robotic pets.

Biosimulant asks to see what it would look like when you can simulate everything biology in a virtual lab environment.

Both projects are different expressions of the same long-term obsession.

The overarching direction is this:

Use AI to simulate biology end-to-end, then use that simulation capability to build systems that augment and eventually replace biological substrates.

In the video, I gave the high level of how I am thinking about these two projects, because this helps with recruiting and partnerships.

Antroph

Tabletop robots, embodied intelligence within furniture, an intelligent and talking lamp -> life-sized pet indistinguishable from organic -> bionics for animals -> bionics for humans -> In Omni

Biosimulant

Simple mechanistic modeling and AI/ML biomodeling -> drug discovery and workflow compression -> full species simulations -> interface with hardware and bionics enablement -> In Omni

If you want to be a part of any of this in any way, or have ideas, corrections, or feedback, send me a Twitter DM or a LinkedIn message.