Lee Cronin: Origin of Life, Aliens, Complexity, and Consciousness | Lex Fridman Podcast #269

Concept

Lee Cronin introduces chemputation, a novel approach to chemical synthesis that leverages state machines to automate the creation of molecules. He explains that chemputation allows chemists to program chemical reactions, making the process more efficient and reproducible. This technology aims to democratize access to advanced chemical machinery, reducing costs and increasing reliability 1.

Computation is a name I gave to the process of building a state machine to make any molecule physically in the lab.

--- Lee Cronin

Lex Fridman and Lee discuss the potential of chemputation to transform the field of chemistry by removing human error and ambiguity from the process 2.

   

Applications

The practical applications of chemputation are vast, ranging from drug discovery to personalized medicine. Lee highlights how this technology can accelerate the development of new drugs and make them more accessible globally. He envisions a future where chemputation enables the creation of personalized medications tailored to an individual's genetic profile 3.

There's going to be a Moore's Law of molecules, right? There's going to be so many more molecules. We can design so many more diseases we can cure.

--- Lee Cronin

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Challenges

Implementing chemputation comes with significant ethical and practical challenges. Lee emphasizes the importance of securing chemputation processes to prevent misuse, such as the creation of illegal drugs or harmful substances. He suggests encrypting chemical programs (Kydls) to ensure they are only used by authorized entities 5.

We can secure the computer. And because of the way we have a many you know, it's like the same mapping problem that you to actually reverse engineer a Kydl will be as hard as reverse engineering the encryption key.

--- Lee Cronin

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