• Modern NLP systems reportedly extract useful features from ultrasonic/infra-sonic components of speech, but the Opus codec’s mandatory 48 kHz resampling can discard these cues, raising concerns for downstream speech-analysis pipelines.

• Participants sketched a concept for an “electronic polymerase”: a DNA-synthesizing enzyme whose nucleotide choice is gated by electrical or optical signals, potentially evolved through directed-evolution platforms rather than rational design.

• A concrete proposal emerged to evolve light-responsive polymerases by embedding azobenzene-containing unnatural amino acids in catalytic sites, then screening for reversible, wavelength-specific activity; the main bottleneck is devising a high-throughput optical-selection assay.

• Discussion referenced Prof. Montclare’s directed-evolution lecture (http://diyhpl.us/diyhpluswiki/transcripts/montclare-protein-engineering/directed-evolution/) as a template for thermostability screens that could be adapted to optical gating, and noted the need for sub-attoliter droplet isolation to link single-molecule optical stimuli to polymerase outcomes.

• The AGI-16 conference playlist on YouTube and IndieBio Demo Day videos were circulated as up-to-date sources of deep-learning AGI talks and open biotech prototypes, respectively.

• Bryan Bishop uploaded two new wiki pages: a transcript titled “Deep Neural Networks Can’t Make AGI” from AGI-16 and a Montclare lecture on directed-evolution techniques for protein engineering.

• A debate over cellular rejuvenation cited Lapasset’s centenarian fibroblast iPSC data and Gurdon’s classic nuclear-transfer experiments, questioning whether reprogramming truly resets epigenetic age.

• It was argued that aging itself qualifies as a “mortal illness with no traditional cure,” potentially allowing compassionate use of unapproved therapeutics under existing regulatory frameworks.