# Why We're Living in a Biological Singularity With Ben Lamm | MOONSHOTS Live #297 Moonshots · 2026-09-30 · 44 min · https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHg3oX1ytYQ ## Transcript Peter Diamandis I got a little scared backstage when Palmer said, “There was a message on the screen saying I shouldn’t say that.” I thought, “For God’s sake, whatever it is, it’s not about Colossal.” Please don’t say that. ### Why Ben Lamm Entered Synthetic Biology I remember at Abundance 360 last March, right before you came out, Elon was there. You said, “Yes, I want a tame woolly mammoth.” How are you doing with this project? Ben Lamm We get these kinds of requests all the time. Peter Diamandis There was a great episode, I think, of American Dad or Family Guy where they explained CRISPR. Did you see that? I don’t know if you saw this. Ben Lamm They explained CRISPR there, and it was amazing. Peter Diamandis That was cool because, at the end, they say, “Yeah, and the woolly mammoths turned out to be the size of dogs.” Ben Lamm This is what they really were. Peter Diamandis So the fossils were just a mistake, right? It was cool because it explains CRISPR. Ben Lamm The second-most-popular request we get is for mammoths “in a cup.” Peter Diamandis In a cup? Ben Lamm Mammoths the size of a teacup. Peter Diamandis Like— Ben Lamm Yeah, everyone wants a mammoth like that. Peter Diamandis They want to take the mammoth so they can put it in their handbag, right? Ben Lamm We can create new melanin, make it pink, and then Paris might want that. Peter Diamandis We’re not working on that right now. Ben Lamm We’re making good progress with the mammoth project. Peter Diamandis Amazing. You founded 4 successful companies before Colossal—in gaming, defense, artificial intelligence, and mobile technology. You knew nothing about synthetic biology before you started. The company is now worth over $10 billion. Why did the restoration of extinct species become your billion-dollar project? Was the lack of experience in synthetic biology an obstacle or an advantage? Ben Lamm I think that’s a huge advantage. It gives me the opportunity to go into offices—Palmer talked about that a little bit, too—and hire people to replace me, hiring people who are significantly smarter than you, right? ### Scalable Gene Editing & DNA Synthesis What’s great about this, from my perspective, is that I have to deal with a lot of the same problems, but at the same time, I can sit down with, for example, Beth Shapiro and learn about isolating ancient DNA and how not to do certain things. Then, at the next meeting, I can learn where we push the boundaries of multiplex editing and how many edits we can do at once. I would say that, probably throughout my career, I’ve been able to ask the right questions because I’m very inquisitive. But I really stand by that old adage: surround yourself with the smartest women and men, and just ask them a question. I go to meetings just to ask questions. Ninety percent of the time, people probably think, “If you knew more about biology, this meeting would go faster.” But 10% of the time, they say, “We never thought of it that way, did we?” Peter Diamandis This is such an important lesson for all of us entrepreneurs. Just because you’re not an expert in a field doesn’t mean you shouldn’t pursue it if you love it and attract the best talent around you. Ben Lamm Yes. George Church—and that’s the only thing I would brag about, something I’m very proud of—says I’m the best student he’s ever had. I literally bombard him with questions. My favorite time of year is the holidays, when no one works, because I can spend hours on the phone with George Church discussing the possibilities of synthetic biology. Peter Diamandis Who is George Church to us? Ben Lamm If you don’t know George, you could say he’s the father of synthetic biology. He’s the head of the Department of Genetics at Harvard, and a lot of the next-generation reading and writing technologies were invented in Church’s lab. His laboratory is very fruitful; it has spawned a large number of companies worth billions of dollars. This is probably the most active startup biology lab in the world. George is under 2 meters tall, suffers from narcolepsy, and is terribly funny. Peter Diamandis He’s such a great guy. Ben Lamm Yes. He’s the most cooperative person in the world. That’s why he’s also a fan of open source and strongly supports the democratization of technologies such as genome sequencing. He wanted to bring the cost down from billions to $100, and he was very active in that area. He’s probably the most collaborative co-founder I’ve ever worked with. Peter Diamandis Dave? ### The Business Model for AI + Biology Dave Blundin I’m very interested in the business model in biology. I think we all know that, among all the future applications of AI, solving the problems of disease and overcoming pain is the number-one priority. I’m really interested to hear your thoughts as a serial entrepreneur who came to biology from another field. My first question about the business model is about the base models. We just saw that the Astra can drive without any additional settings. Will it be able to work with biology in the same way, or will you say, “No, no, no, we need to create our own”? Ben Lamm On the base models, we were lucky enough to collaborate with both OpenAI and Anthropic and get early access to their developments, which was great. For a long time, we used them as a kind of intelligent middleware. If you look at it from a software-development perspective, we linked lab logs and Jira. Perhaps the most difficult thing we did at the company was training scientists to work in Jira. That’s sometimes more difficult than reprogramming sensors. For a long time, before the advent of advanced models, LLMs were very good at writing term papers. But they weren’t very good at ancestral-state reconstruction or comparative genomics. They just didn’t work there, and that would have been extremely useful. We used them as layers of infrastructure middleware so that we didn’t have to hire Deloitte or Accenture to build all these systems and reporting. I think we were very successful in implementing this for a long time. Now they have advanced far enough to conduct simulation experiments. There are a lot of companies like Laila and others that are trying to build lab automation around this. We’re pretty cautious about how and when to invest in this category, but I think you’ll find some interesting applications for connections that are still really language issues. For example, if you search the literature for information about mice—let’s say you want to create a new therapeutic company for humans and you look at all the published work on mice—you’ll see that, in many studies, the same gene is called differently, classified differently, and the experiment is conducted slightly differently. If you try to replicate the same experiment, you’ll get a 40% to 60% failure rate, which is just awful. I think AI will be very useful in the next wave of development, beyond small-molecule drug development, and will help bridge this gap and unify terminology in research. There are times when we do work and later find out that there was already a peer-reviewed article on the issue we’re trying to address. But because of the way we searched, we were unable to find it in PubMed or other databases. I think that, in the short term, AI is going to be the connecting link in communication. Anthropic announced a few days ago that it and Ginkgo, along with others, are going to test this. You’ll still need to conduct laboratory experiments to verify and confirm the results. But modeling designs for a variety of experiments and helping to creatively plan future studies is where we’ll see AI applied to biology over the next 3 to 5 years. ### Can AI Understand a Genome? Dave Blundin How about this? If we’re talking about text data and research results, analyzing thousands and thousands of previous tests is entirely the territory of large language models. But what if my input vector is just a gene sequence? If I upload this to Anthropic right now, I’m pretty sure I won’t get anything useful out of it. Ben Lamm Yes, but on a larger scale. Thank you for this eyeliner. This is something I fundamentally believe in: the importance of the global biorepository system that we’re currently deploying. We’re trying to implement a model, a kind of “Noah’s Ark 2.0.” It’s not that Noah didn’t make it through the first stage, but our approach is a little different. We do ATX sequencing and other things that he didn’t do. We’re trying to work with governments around the world to create local biorepositories and collect all this data so we can do T2T sequencing. I agree with you: you can’t just upload one genome into Mythos and have it say, “If you make these 6 changes, it’ll become immortal.” But I think if you look at thousands of genomes across all these evolutionary lineages in birds and see that they’re not susceptible to a lot of diseases, you’re going to pay attention to that. We do this on a small scale, for example, with p53, jellyfish, and other things. We look at the known outcomes of species and then try to trace them back through the tree of life. We’re already doing this in one of our companies, and we’re very inspired. The first results are positive. But, as you said, you can’t just take a genome and get a ready-made answer on how to fix it and make it perfect. However, I believe that this amount of data, from a comparative-genomics perspective and at scale, will allow this to be achieved. Dave Blundin I also believe that the dataset is more valuable than the model itself. Peter Diamandis Yes, yes, yes. Because I have this dataset. We’ve emphasized this so many times. Yes, Alex. ### De-Extinction & Engineering Life Alexander Wissner-Gross I’d like to talk a little bit about de-extinction. I realize you have over 4 spin-offs now, but despite everything, de-extinction, to me, is what you and Colossal are all about, maybe? Ben Lamm Yes. Alexander Wissner-Gross And there are certain things we shouldn't talk about, and we won't talk about them. So, de-extinction. There was a Russian philosopher, Nikolai Fedorov, at the end of the 19th century, the founder of a philosophical movement called Russian cosmism, who argued that the ultimate goal of humanity in the development of science and technology would be to develop the technology to resurrect every person who had ever lived. Russian cosmism—you can search for it. So, in a sense, you're not doing de-extinction right now. I understand that. But in a way, by resurrecting various model species, including the woolly mammoth, you are the first company on Earth, as far as I know, that at least has a plausible business model or technical trajectory for trying to recreate the entire historical biosphere—not just every human who has ever lived, but every nonhuman organism that has ever existed. True? In the age of superintelligence, when great challenges are being overcome one after another, do you believe that the common task of humanity, as the 19th-century Russian cosmists believed, is that we will eventually have the technology to regenerate every organism that has ever lived, or at least every human being? Do you foresee this becoming possible? Ben Lamm I am not. I think that with DNA synthesis, predictive modeling, and certain components of synthetic biology, we can get pretty close analogs. But I don't think so, with 2 big caveats. First, just so you know, Colossal does not use any of our Colossal technologies for humans. So we won't do that, even though I think our technology... Alexander Wissner-Gross is not suitable for that? Is that what you mean? Ben Lamm I think when you start working with people, you need different investors sometimes, and definitely different management, right? You go through a different process, and— Alexander Wissner-Gross And more patience. Ben Lamm And more patience, right? That was actually a really good piece of advice I got from Bob Nelsen. Bob Nelsen said early on, “Hey, don't apply any of this to people for a long time, because you'll actually end up in code-freeze mode with the FDA, and it'll just be endless monotony. Decide, develop technologies until they reach a plateau before moving on to another.” But going back to your question, I think that fundamentally, most organisms—remember, these are most organisms that we know of. Very few people realize this, but less than 100 tyrannosaurs have been found. I don't want to go down that path or scare you. There are less than 100 tyrannosaurs ever found, right? But there were billions that are said to have lived on Earth at different times, right? So very few things leave fossil remains. I think it's more likely that we'll be able to create life in terms of programmable biological systems the way we want it to be, rather than just bringing back everything that once existed, because I don't even think we know what everything was, do we? I think it's quite likely, based on future artificial superintelligence, that we'll get to the point where we say, “Oh, we're going to engineer that.” To your question, maybe it existed, but we'll just never know because there are no fossils left, right? So I think we would rather create life for our own benefit than try to revive something. Even if Colossal, or some of our technologies like cloning and genetic engineering, can revive something, as you know, there are environmental factors, epigenetics, and all these other factors. For example, if we could clone Mozart, it doesn't mean he's going to show up and say, “Oh, I'm going to solve the problem of the terrible trajectory music has taken.” Alexander Wissner-Gross Well, I mean, just a follow-up question. In terms of Mozart himself, we really do know a lot about Mozart's life. So let's say that if we really wanted to resurrect Mozart, we would have no problem recreating the conditions of his childhood. I—up to a point, right? I—up to a point, right? Ben Lamm So, I don't—by the way, just to be clear, I'm not in any way encouraging this line of questioning, but we take people and we grow them. It was like you were going to build a Michael Jordan- or LeBron-level dream team, and that scares me a little. I think it's quite possible that, if we could—it's not entirely—it's 100% accurate to say that we understand their genetic predisposition and ability for certain traits. Under the right conditions, if you want to fully apply the simulation design to them and put them in the right environment, then your Mozart 2.0 could probably be even better than Mozart 1.0. ### Designing Animals & the Ethics of De-Extinction Peter Diamandis But Ben, let's go back to the animal world, because the main thesis right now is that AI systems can design a genome sequence that reflects a phenotype. So if you want an animal that's bigger, it's not 100% ready yet, but that's the goal, right? If you need an animal with a longer snout or an animal with wings. As I asked you on the FII stage, do you know if it's possible to create a Pikachu? Ben Lamm Yeah, it seems like a weird fan favorite. I think people are more accepting of Pikachu than these big genetic human camps that you think of. Brand types. Alexander Wissner-Gross Yes, yes, yes. Very true. I think people are more open to this model of genomic engineering than— But maybe to sum it up, it seems like this isn't a purely technical objection. It is more a concern about social, political, regulatory, and ethical issues, right? Ben Lamm You know, Stewart Brand made this famous comment. Peter, you wrote the title of your book. He said, “We're like gods, so we should start acting like them, right?” and he said this in 1968. We are at a stage where any species can be revived or brought back. How do you consider the ethics of what we should give back? Which ones should we not return? I'm a huge Stewart fan. I love him, and I love Ryan. This quote has been famous for a long time, like, you know, something from a famous movie about dinosaurs. But I don't know if I would characterize it as Stewart not getting on the plane. From my perspective, I would say we waste a lot of time. From a synthetic biology perspective, it is not yet possible to bring back or create everything. So we try to be very balanced, and people ask us, “Is there a checklist? How exactly do you approach species selection?” There are species that we have publicly announced, and there are those that we have not yet announced. Alexander Wissner-Gross Cut it, cut it. I'm not talking about what exactly you do. Do you mean philosophically? Generally philosophically, right? If we could bring back any species, who would be in charge? What arguments do you use to say, “This is what you should return, and that is not”? Just from a social ethics perspective, how should we think about this? Speciesism, right? Ben Lamm Yes, that's a great question. Since we're the guinea pigs in this, so to speak, we're wondering: What was their contribution to the environment? What was their contribution to the food chain? Why did they become extinct? What do Indigenous peoples think about this, right? For some of the species that we work with, there's a deep spiritual connection with Indigenous peoples. So you're not going to just come in and quote Stewart Brand to them, are you? Therefore, I think it is very important to take all these factors into account and weigh them. We may make mistakes, and I think society will make mistakes too, but we will keep trying. We're also looking at whether there's an educational benefit to this, right? For example, when we were working with dire wolves, after consulting with Indigenous peoples, the Red Wolf Coalition, and other groups, we also considered the pop-culture component. We thought, “Is there a way to get all these people who are into science fiction, Game of Thrones, or Magic: The Gathering involved in the cause of wolf conservation?” Can we teach them genomic engineering, since we have brought back what they thought was only a mythical creature from their fantasy universe? So we try to evaluate all these things differently. There is no perfect internal algorithm for assessing the situation, but I'm sure that as technology spreads, and as governments use it, they will have to evaluate everything on an individual basis. Alexander Wissner-Gross So, Ben, no one should think that we will never make mistakes someday. Ben Lamm Well, because there are so many different factors involved, right? Let's say I'm from some Indigenous tribe and I worship the Tasmanian devil. This does not mean that it should or should not be brought back to life. There are a whole bunch of other factors. We will have to think about this very carefully, because the power you bring to this world is something we have never seen in human history. Peter Diamandis Yes, yes. I mean, it's quite—you're like a walking singularity. Ben Lamm Yeah. I think society doesn't quite understand it. I mean, they mentioned Clark too, and I think they all came up with Ian Malcolm when they talked about it. But I really think he was right. I truly believe that the technologies emerging at the intersection of synthetic biology, computing, AI, and eventually quantum technologies will be more powerful than any weapon created so far. ### Are We Entering a Biological Singularity? Peter Diamandis Ben, we're talking about solving everything. We say that mathematics has already been mastered, and physics, chemistry, and biology are next. Is there a tipping point—a singularity in biology—where suddenly there's a complete knowledge base of all the known DNA and all the known phenotypes, and you can literally design an organism? CAD for biology. You can create a request: “Give me an animal that does this.” Ben Lamm Yes, I think DNA synthesis is not quite at that level yet. Peter Diamandis But predict this for me. Ben Lamm Yes, yes, yes. I believe this world will come in fewer than 10 years. Peter Diamandis Good. So you will be able to create your own Pikachu or other animal within 10 years. Ben Lamm Whoever has the technology should do it for you, but I think the technology to engineer key phenotypes of basic organisms from different clades, synthesize them or multiplex-edit them, and then grow them outside the womb—that's a decade away. Peter Diamandis Okay, outside the uterus, over the course of a decade. Tell me about yours. What is it? Ben Lamm Let me give you the current curve—and that doesn't mean it will continue the same way, of course. We celebrated success when we made 20 edits, and I think 99% of biopharmaceutical companies and research institutions would do that today. We consistently perform more than 300 edits with an efficiency of over 90%. Peter Diamandis That was a year ago. Wow. Ben Lamm Yes, we're testing thousands right now. This is an exponential growth curve, but that doesn't mean it will continue to be like this. We're testing 1,000 options. We're now at the level of 1,000 edits, but that doesn't mean it will work. Peter Diamandis Tripling base edits every year? Ben Lamm We don't know if it will work, but we have success. The initial results may be low efficiency, but it works. There will come a time when replacing large fragments using DNA synthesis will simply be better. Unfortunately, people in this category don't really have a business incentive to synthesize DNA after a certain scale, so we just started doing it on our own. Peter Diamandis Mathematically, tripling every year—now you have 1,000 base edits. What does this give? Ben Lamm Well, we—no, no, no. We're consistently above 300, and we're testing 1,000. I think it's very likely that we'll make it work. Peter Diamandis When will the moment come when everything gets really crazy and you can do whatever you want? Ben Lamm I think synthesis will replace multiplex editing sooner. Peter Diamandis So, essentially, a machine that generates all that gigabit code that you need. Ben Lamm I think this has a higher probability of success and is faster. ### Artificial Wombs Within 24 Months? Peter Diamandis Okay, Ben, you've created an artificial egg—not one that's eaten, but one that gives life to birds. How far are we from a woman in the room, young or old, giving birth to a child in an artificial womb? Ben Lamm A person. From a technological perspective, I think the answer will be very different from the answer from a societal, acceptance, ethics, and rights perspective. Peter Diamandis Okay, let's talk about an artificial uterus for mammals. Ben Lamm Yes, I think within 24 months, we at Colossal will have fully extrauterine mammalian birth, from conception to birth, without a surrogate mother. Peter Diamandis Wow. For mammals. This is simply incredible. This is wild. I hope it's even sooner, but I think 24 months is very likely. ### Colossal’s Next Major Breakthrough I need to ask a quick question. Just raise your hands in the hall: is your brain exploding? Well, okay, just checking. I'm sure I'm not the only one. So what's the “iPhone” moment for Colossal? Is it a mammoth coming onto the stage? Is there anything else? Ben Lamm I think it's a “wow” moment. We've had a little bit of that already, but I think the next big tipping points will be when we show the world the next extinct species. Peter Diamandis I think it's always in the “zero-to-one” mindset. When will it be? Ben Lamm Just kidding. Soon. Demonstrating another extinct species through precise gene editing is number one. Number two is the artificial development and gestation of mammals. That's number two. And we're working on something we haven't talked about yet, and I think it's just as exciting as dire wolves. We have more to surprise and delight you, if that surprised and delighted you. If this surprised and scared you, we have something for you, too. ### Mapping Genotype to Phenotype Peter Diamandis Can I ask you about the dataset? Protein folding came as a complete surprise to everyone. It seemed like it was decided overnight. This has become a real goldmine of change for all of biotechnology, and my daughter uses it every day. So the equivalent of the genotype-to-phenotype mapping problem is when you say, “Okay, this sequence created—oh, this is Alexander Wissner-Gross. Okay, this sequence created a llama. Perfectly. This is a dodo bird.” I like this final jump. We like this jump, by the way. Is there ever going to be a point where, having a dataset that you're accumulating, you can interpolate and say, “Okay, now I don't need to create this. I know exactly what will happen”? Ben Lamm From a product perspective, we're currently doing it at the species level, or trying to extrapolate to larger groups of animals. For example, size is an important factor. The model species we work with for the Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, is the fat-tailed dunnart, and it's 1,500 times bigger—from a marsupial mouse to a marsupial wolf. Understanding that and extrapolating it, and determining exactly what regulates it—not just the genes, but how and when they're regulated during development—is important. Can you make an orca the size of your goldfish? Probably not, but you will probably be able to scale within certain feature levels. If you look at certain species, like dogs, and also certain groups of birds, they have enormous ranges of scale, well over 1,500 times. We're looking at this not from a trait-engineering perspective, but from a de-extinction purist perspective: looking at the genes that caused X, Y, and Z. Separately, we're trying to extrapolate this to the clade level so that we can say, “How can we affect size, even within 20% to 50% of the variance in other species?” I think coat color, size, skin folds, scales, and feathers—all of these would be completely measurable. They can be induced very quickly. Peter Diamandis Interesting. So you can— Ben Lamm We don't know everything, but we have an entire AI team that works just on patterns and stripes. In fact, this is a very difficult task: patterns, tusks, stripes, muzzle length, and hair. By the way, it was quite significant when Chris and I took our boys to Dallas. It was a real surprise for us to see woolly mice there. Peter Diamandis How many gene edits did it take to do this? Ben Lamm The first generation we showed to the public was eight. Surprisingly, in one delivery, eight pairs of bases. Eight edits. Eight edits in total. Eight basic edits in one delivery. ### Moonshots, Conservation & Ex Utero Mammals Peter Diamandis Let's move on to audience questions. This is a question from Bruno. We'll invite you back to Moonshots to talk about this. Bruno asks: Does a moonshot have to solve one of the world's problems? We had Shatner the other day, and I thought, “If we have—” Ben Lamm Oh, yeah. They appear everywhere. Yes, probably. Tribbles. Peter Diamandis That's right. We need tribbles. Ben Lamm You could bring back the tribbles. I think “bring back” is the wrong phrase. It's better to say that we could create them in the future. Peter Diamandis Okay. Bruno asks you the following: Does a moonshot have to solve one huge problem in one vertical, or can it be horizontal, solving everyday needs that span many industries? We'll ask Astro, the captain of the moonshots, this question a little later. Ben Lamm I think you can move across verticals. But remember, I have ADHD, and I think this lack of concentration gives us more wisdom in many categories. We view de-extinction as a systemic problem, but the same systemic modeling that helps conserve or restore species can be applied to many areas, including health care. If you lay the foundation in what you're building, it can be applied to many cases. It doesn't have to be so narrow that if you miss the moment, you lose the broader perspective. Peter Diamandis Here's a great question from Teresa: How do you plan to address ethical issues when creating mammals outside the womb? Mammals have emotional needs, and simply creating an animal does not relieve you of emotional responsibility for the living being. I was going to ask the same thing. For example, if it is born outside the womb, do you give it a family to live in? Ben Lamm Yes, it all depends on upbringing. We do a lot of things, and I think most people don't know that because the media doesn't always cover everything we do. We have a foundation, and we provide open access to all our technologies for nature conservation. Everyone can use our technologies for species conservation for free. We have 75 partners around the world, we're very grateful to them, and we also fund projects in this direction. Mammoths and elephants are extremely social animals. We're not going to bring back one mammoth; we're bringing back herds. We're working on 16 different lines at the same time. We have 16 different lines in operation. Peter Diamandis No, no—how many mammoths do you want to bring back? Ben Lamm Do I want to bring back? Tens of thousands. Tens of thousands of mammoths. Peter Diamandis Wow. In Los Angeles? Ben Lamm There should be Columbian mammoths or pygmy mammoths here. Augustine, Augustine, Augustine. Peter Diamandis The main question that everyone is silent about is: Where do you put these mammoths? Ben Lamm But back to that—wait, wait, wait. I want to answer this because I think it's a really important and profound question. You had California condors and all these different species that were close to extinction, and people were working on breeding them. We see that while there is a halo of positivity around this today for elephants, it also has broader implications for what Colossal is trying to do. In Botswana, we found an incredible group called Elephant Havens that works with orphaned baby elephants. These elephants are already born—not from scratch—but they were born and abandoned for some reason. Elephant Havens is working, using artificial intelligence and many other tools, to figure out how to create synthetic herds in a matriarchal elephant society, where they don't have that right now. How do they raise these elephants and teach them to be elephants, and also to work together in a herd? That's how elephants behave. And we're also funding and conducting research into everything from satellite imagery and drones to artificial intelligence, creating programs along different elephant migration routes and corridors so we can understand the social dynamics and movement hierarchies. All this technology and data is impacting elephant conservation work today. That means you don't have orphaned elephants; you can return entire herds to the wild. But all of this data also tells us how we're going to raise these animals so that, if they're born outside the womb, they grow up in a social dynamic with the right hierarchy. ### Can Woolly Mammoths Help Fight Climate Change? Peter Diamandis Dave, did you want to say something? Dave Blundin Here's a true story: Your colleague George Church was at a presentation we were giving at MIT, and the topic was global warming. He said, “Well, I have something here. I have a cure for global warming: We're going to bring back the woolly mammoth.” The woolly mammoth's native habitat is Siberia and northern Canada—tundra. When they existed, there were no trees because the woolly mammoth went around and felled all the trees. Elephants really do this in Africa. Forest elephants are incredible at it. So we're like, “What the hell does this have to do with global warming?” He replies, “Grass grows without trees. Grass actually absorbs more carbon than trees. It is about 6 times more efficient, and the albedo effect from reflecting light into space increases by 2 to 3 times.” Peter Diamandis I don't think you guys have coordinated this with the Canadians to see if it's okay, but you're releasing them in Canada to live in the tundra. Salim Ismail I myself am originally from India. Seriously, where should we build Jurassic Park? No, wait—that's a really strong argument. Peter Diamandis In the early stages, I'm a big data fan. Most of my experience is in software and a little bit in space hardware, but mostly I just want to follow where the data points. You have convinced very intelligent scientists like George, who say that if you have that density of mammoths in these places, in the tundra, they will have this effect on the permafrost—a drop in temperature of 6 to 8 degrees in the summer months—and it only melts up to a certain point. So you can extrapolate that. We actually did this exercise, and it's quite interesting. But it all comes down to comparing top-down and bottom-up approaches in terms of how they impact the environment. There are other people in the scientific community, particularly at Colossal, who believe they won't have that level of impact. The good news is that, regardless of how they feel about exactly how 10,000+ mammoths in the Arctic will solve the problem of climate change, it doesn't really matter, because they have a net positive impact on the environment and help restore this ecosystem. What I'm trying to do—and Palmer mentioned this earlier—is figure out how you get two scoundrels in the same room to agree. That extrapolates to the tenth degree when they both have PhDs. In my experience, I don't have a PhD, and people sometimes think I'm waging war on academia, but people with PhDs are pretty difficult to communicate with. They have a model, but I've noticed that when you sit them down together, tell them they're both right, and help them figure it out, it really works. So I said that maybe George is right that this density of mammoths at this latitude and longitude would have this effect, but maybe others are right in saying that it would have a positive effect on flora and fauna without fixing climate change. In any case, it doesn't really matter whether this is a net benefit to modern elephants and the tundra ecosystem, which has been severely degraded. Everyone can agree that the ecosystem is in terrible shape and we need to make it better. That's why I did it. I don't want to claim that George is right, but I'll just say that I've studied the calculations, and I think George is pretty smart. ### Astromech, Biodiversity & the Future of Biology Ben, you just started AstroMech, a company that's worth billions of dollars from the start. What does AstroMech do? Ben Lamm That was kind of a lead-in to your question. Fundamental and animal models don't quite capture the entire tree of life, and they can't magically get the genome overnight and give us the answer. So we try to create what we internally call inflectional models. What are these inflectional models that you can plug into those fundamental models and say, “Okay, we've learned and understand everything about this genome sequence, how it evolved, and, more importantly, when it evolved and why it didn't evolve in related clades”? Then we look at everything, including climate and what drove it, because we want to build, essentially, a predictive model to say, “Okay, where did this go, and why?” I don't think Astromech will have a magical, entropic mythos—that $4 trillion or whatever final round—that solves all the questions about everything. But I think we will have enough unique data sets to classify, understand, and connect them. When you have global biorepositories and millions of samples to submit to Mythos, it can act as a kind of competitor, acting as a regulator, telling you where to go and what to focus on. Peter Diamandis If you combine a few questions, what's the biggest problem that you think should be worked on? What's the “moon project” that no one is working on right now? Ben Lamm I think we will lose half of our biodiversity in the next 25 years. Everyone who loves us or hates us agrees with this, so we need to do something about it. Governments—this cannot be solved by zoos or nonprofit organizations. We need billions of dollars in federal funding from different governments working together to at least back up life. We back up everything else. We make backups, save our photos, and make backup copies of messages and emails. We back up everything. Although, in the end, I think most people make copies of messages and letters. Wait, some people use Signal. But for the most part, I really think we need to invest in infrastructure right now to preserve these species, because if we don't, then when we lose a species, it negatively impacts ecosystems and animal food chains. If you love ecosystems, you should make a copy of them. If you don't like ecosystems and hate the environment but love animals, you should make a copy of them. If you hate the environment and animals but love [bleeped] people, you should copy them. There's data there that will help humanity. By the way, as a quick aside, one of my companies, with a great CEO, Bob Horry, is called Celularity. It has a LifebankUSA project where, when a child is born, we store all the cells from the placenta. You actually have the original boot disk: your child's stem cells, T cells, natural killer cells, and everything. It's like if your child had an extra set of organs—would you throw them away? Probably not. So why throw them away? The placenta is a 3D printer that creates a baby. This vision of security and backups is just amazing. Peter Diamandis So this is what you're doing in Dubai now? Ben Lamm We do it in Dubai. We just announced a partnership with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as part of Secretary Zinke's directive to preserve the natural resources that make America great. So we're now doing it here, within the country. We have 2 more governments that we haven't announced yet, but we will do so when they want to, as they are part of our structure. It's also similar to what George and I are talking about with open source—it's completely open. Any nonprofit, academic institution, large foundation, private individual, or anyone from Palmer's secret club of billionaires who wants to put money into this—to be in a secret boys' club. Peter Diamandis Are you in a secret boys' club? Ben Lamm No comment. I'm not in any secret jet owners' groups. Speaker 1 I have a quick question. Peter Diamandis Okay, let's wrap up with your quick question. Speaker 1 I want to be Ben Lamm, with a mind as creative and crazy as yours, to imagine these things. How do I do this? How do I adopt your mindset to use technology as creatively as you do? Ben Lamm I guess I'm very curious. I just like learning new things. In a world, especially with artificial intelligence, where everyone has the answer to any question at their fingertips, I'm pretty good at admitting what I don't know. I approach things with childlike enthusiasm and just say, “Hey, I don't know that, but I'm sure I can find the answer.” I also found that most people—this is a big piece of advice I would give to everyone—will help you. I am an optimist. I believe in technology, but above all, I believe in humanity. People will help you, so I don't think people ask for help often enough. It seems to me that everyone walks, rides the subway, and so on, staring at their phones. But if you look around for even a moment and ask for help, people will help you. When I don't understand something, sometimes I call people, like some of our lead advisors at Colossal. I just wrote them a cold email: “Hey, I don't understand this. My teams tell me this. You are a world expert in this field. Can you meet with me?” This woman or man has no reason to talk to me, right? But they will agree to the call. So I feel like I have this general curiosity that surrounds me. Peter Diamandis People like you. They want to help you. Ben Lamm No, I think they're like everyone else. It really is. I believe in humanity: if people ask for help, 9 times out of 10 they will receive it. Peter Diamandis A quick round of applause for that, right? A worldview of curiosity, a worldview of purpose, and a quick question from Katie Wood backstage, who said yesterday that Anthropic announced their labs that are capable of creating something like CRISPR. Does it stimulate your work, or perhaps kill the momentum for development? Ben Lamm No, I think this is an incredible confirmation. That’s a great question. Cathie is wonderful. I think this is very important. There are so many problems in biology that need to be solved. These technologies—we haven’t even opened the door. The door is barely ajar. I think what they announced yesterday—people see it and say, “Oh my God, in 5 years we’ll be dead because this is going to be Anthropic in our lifetime.” That’s not true. This is simply not true. So I think this was a huge turning point for the industry, showing that there are AI companies that understand biology, and they know that this is going to be one of the most acceptable uses for their technology, because people want to have healthier families and live longer. So it was a great thing for society. Peter Diamandis Very briefly. Do you have an assessment of the probability of a disaster, or do you not even think about it? Ben Lamm You know, I’m an optimist. Yes, I am an optimist. I don’t agree that—I think we’re going to have scary moments, and I think that’s okay, because I believe in human ingenuity to overcome these problems. But I think it needs to be talked about. I think the media is exaggerating this a bit right now, to put it mildly. But I think we’ll actually get to that point. We’ll have some scary moments, but it’s like turbulence on airplanes—everyone lands anyway. This is normal.