This week’s “Weekly Dose of Optimism” reports on some major breakthroughs across several fields:
Baby KJ became the first human to receive a personalised gene edit, saving his life and opening up new avenues for treating genetic conditions;
Flozins, a class of drugs with parallels to transformative GLP-1 treatments, appear to be effective across a range of conditions;
Google’s DeepMind released details of AlphaEvolve, an evolutionary coding agent which enhances large language models and can optimise computational infrastructure;
Meta’s Fundamental AI Research lab released a number of powerful new AI tools and datasets, all of which will be open sourced;
Particle colliders at CERN took another step closer to achieving alchemy, turning lead into gold;
Overdose deaths in the US fell by almost 30,000, in what is being described as the first meaningful drop in over a decade.
Finally, murder rates also appear to be falling in the US, offering further cause for optimism.
