Three years ago, as I came back home from a three-month stint in Silicon Valley, a lot of people asked me about my experience at Singularity University. What is the point of it all?, was one of the questions that I always had a harder time giving a clear answer to.
You know that feeling about trying to walk the fine line between being terribly upbeat, but not sounding like a delusional cult member? That is how I experienced those situations at times.
Fast-forward three years, and the world is in shock (including the brilliant Lluís Montoliu in this interview) about He Jiankui‘s announcement of having deactivated a gene in two newly born Chinese twin girls using CRISPR. It is the first reported case of such technique being applied to born humans.
And so, you might ask? Well, in 2015 we were privileged enough to hear the presentation of a Danish scientist working at a Chinese lab. He candidly admitted his excitement about being able to advance human gene manipulation in a more favorable, laxer legal environment. Reading between the lines, those of us present got the message that the human frontier for gene editing would not be upheld in China as much as in the Western world.
By being exposed to Singularity University and its ecosystem encompassing so many brilliant people, amazing opportunities open up. Some, like founding Iris.ai, are more tangible. Others, like getting a privileged early view on the cutting edge of fast evolving transformational technologies, are simply more ethereal; but not necessarily less valuable.
