“ We have unusually strong marketing connections; Vitalik approves of us; Aella is a marketing advisor on this project; SlateStarCodex is well aware of us. We are quite networked in the Effective Altruism space. We could plausibly get an Elon tweet. ”
From the short investor spiel document. Also they want to just bypass the FDA?
Ok, read their actual pitch. Lmao they think that a one time introduction of a GMO bacteria strain is going to ‘just work’ because they’ve also GMO’d it to outcompete other bacteria?
There’s a reason we aren’t running our cars on yeast-produced gasoline. No matter how awesome your tuned microbe is, it’s still subject to mutation and natural selection. If your beneficial changes aren’t actually helping it survive, they will not be conserved. And those ‘competitive’ changes you jacked it up with to make sure it dominates the environment? Well, that might end up horizontally transferred into something you don’t like.
About the right amount of ‘we humans are smarter than dumb biology’ metal-fetishism I’d expect from the folks concerned.
My brother in Dawkins, you literally are biology.