In the early 2000s, scientists from the Human Genome Project announced a breakthrough: they had sequenced the complete human reference genome, including all three billion DNA letter, a scientific undertaking akin to landing astronauts on the Moon.
While the reference genome has come under question as of late, with scientists adding more than two million additional variant, it still doesn't take a lot of space to store the entire sequence on a traditional computer.
Musk is once again weighing in on an issue outside his expertise, this time suggesting that one could fit the DNA of all humans alive today in a fairly small data storage system.
The storage size of a single human genome could end up being 100 gigabytes, according to MIT Technology Review senior editor Antonio Regalado, who engaged with Musk over the question.
Billy Markin, one of Musk's closest pen pals, immediately pointed out the potentially hair-raising implications of holding all of humanity's DNA in a small room.
"And it will be used for good, right?" asks Markin in a meme.
That is one interpretation of Musk's comment. The billionaire CEO could be pointing out how small the cumulative data of all humans could be.
Musk mused that one could simply have a few reference human genomes and code each individual with a lossless compression delta.
If one could reference the data shared by multiple human genomes, why store common DNA information twice?
It is an eyebrow-raising comment from the likes of Musk. If the data from the collection of all living humans walking this Earth is ever used for criminal purposes, it will be a disaster.
We have to be careful and assume that Musk was just thinking out loud.
If not, we would be better off.
There is more on Elon Musk.
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