Lex Fridman interviews Manolis Kellis,a professor at MIT and head of the MIT Computational Biology Group.

He is interested in understanding the human genome from a computational, evolutionary, biological, and other cross-disciplinary perspectives.

This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast.

Content outline:

• 0:00 – Introduction
• 3:54 – Human genome
• 17:47 – Sources of knowledge
• 29:15 – Free will
• 33:26 – Simulation
• 35:17 – Biological and computing
• 50:10 – Genome-wide evolutionary signatures
• 56:54 – Evolution of COVID-19
• 1:02:59 – Are viruses intelligent?
• 1:12:08 – Humans vs viruses
• 1:19:39 – Engineered pandemics
• 1:23:23 – Immune system
• 1:33:22 – Placebo effect
• 1:35:39 – Human genome source code
• 1:44:40 – Mutation
• 1:51:46 – Deep learning
• 1:58:08 – Neuralink
• 2:07:07 – Language
• 2:15:19 – Meaning of life