Weekly Dose of Optimism #178

Curation covering brain-computer interfaces, cancer research, genomics, world models, and aging biology.

Curated Topics

1. Neuralink Telepathy at 2 Years — 21 people with brain chips; exceeding 10 bits/sec information transfer; participants studying, creating art; Blindsight trials pending
2. Pancreatic Cancer Triple Therapy — Spanish team eliminates pancreatic cancer in mice via triple combination therapy blocking KRAS + EGFR/HER2 + STAT3; tumors vanished for 200+ days
3. AlphaGenome — DeepMind model decodes 98% non-coding “dark matter” DNA; predicts mutation effects on gene expression at million-base-pair scale
4. Project Genie — DeepMind playable world models from prompts; create and play virtual worlds
5. Life Bio Aging Trial — First human trial of partial epigenetic reprogramming (FDA IND cleared); OSK gene therapy targeting glaucoma/optic neuropathy
6. Silver Linings — Economic modeling: slowing brain aging by 1 year adds $201B/yr to US GDP; delaying biological aging 5 years adds $2T/yr

RDCO-Relevant Items

• AlphaGenome: pattern for domain-specific foundation models processing massive structured data
• World models: inference compute demand implications for data infrastructure
• Silver Linings economic model: prediction market-adjacent quantitative modeling approach