Those don't have the property of being easily verified, which the problems proposed here do. I think that's a smart idea because it's a way to capture quick PR seeking AI-lab dollars for quite useful outcomes.
I guess to me the grandiosity here feels fake and unearned - like they vibe slopped it together without much input in the way of deep thought or expertise.
For example, synthesize arbitrary dna sequences > 3000 nt in length with error rate < 0.001 at > 95% purity. Easily verifiable, beyond the frontier, and generally useful.
I think some of the items on the list are also way less likely to be worked on (like cryogenics) than others, because they really require some heavy infrastructure to iterate. My money for which of these gets cracked with help of an AI would be rubisco, that can be quite effectively worked on in a closed loop lab fashion with a standard lab or CRO.
Biology is a really really big field. Many problems in biology are that of math and coding. Just as a simple example look at the golden ratio in living organisms. Biology follows a lot of different algorithms because they are energy efficient and come with massive secondary benefits.
What is this example meant to illustrate?
>The golden ratio (≈ 1.618) and its related golden angle (137.5°) show up in nature because they maximize space, exposure, and flow.
The golden ratio is an algorithm, but it is also a natural law that systems of many different scales follow. Wherever we look we find examples of it. Without this algorithm the world is a much harder place to explain.
What many scientists starting to look for is these algorithms we have not identified in natural systems as an explanatory means of their workings. Also because they are algorithms they are things we can put into computer systems to increase efficiency, or may naturally emerge from evolutionary learning systems like AI in what we call emegence.
>There is no convincing evidence that the golden ratio is linked to idealized human proportions or facial beauty. There is currently no evidence to support the use of the golden ratio in orthognathic or facial aesthetic/reconstructive surgical planning or analysis of results.
This is about peoples faces. What I listed was about things like available surface area for things like chemical reactions and mixing, you know things that are mathematically calculatable. Much in the same manner a hexagon is an optimal low energy shape, hence we see lots of them in nature too.
the better direction in my opinion, is the mutual reinforcement of coupled dynamic systems, that ends up giving us metabolism.