Super convergence

Advances in AI, genetics, and biotechnology are giving humanity “godlike” powers.

A new epoch began in Earth’s history 530 million years ago, when the emergence of new types of bacteria?boosted the atmospheric availability of oxygen and triggered the evolution of complex new forms of life. Today, humanity again stands on the cusp of a new epoch, but this time humans are driving the change:?Advances in technologies such as artificial intelligence — which may one day evolve into “machine superintelligence” — could radically transform the relationship between?humans and the biological world. At the same time, developments in biological engineering and genome editing are already endowing humans with the power to create new life forms and soon, perhaps, life itself.

“The essential question that will determine the future of humanity and much of life on Earth is whether we can use our godlike powers wisely.”

Scientists have already made headway in synthesizing life: In November 2023, researchers collaborating across universities?announced that they’d synthesized 16 chromosomes found in baker’s?yeast and successfully inserted these genes into living cells, which then replicated. Scientists have also been working to create new amino acid sequences and implant them into cells, which then would produce entirely new proteins.?As scientists gain the ability to?manipulate the building blocks of life, humanity nears a future in which it?could potentially engineer life at a?grander scale.

Scientists and engineers will likely start approaching?biological systems in much the way a painter approaches a palette, transforming nature in ways that reflect the human imagination and ushering in a truly unique moment in human history. It’s imperative that humans become aware of the advances occurring today, and their potentials — both positive and negative — to ensure the results benefit mankind.

AI will reshape health care, providing more sophisticated, personalized prevention and treatment.

For many people, the impact of the revolution in biotech, genetics, and AI will appear most personally in their health care. For example, currently, many people lack adequate preventative care, as practitioners focus on acute interventions and treat patients only when serious symptoms bring them to the emergency room, rather than anticipate and prevent long-term illnesses.?But in the future, health care practitioners, individuals, and AI systems will work together collaboratively to improve health outcomes.?Supported by machine intelligence, individuals will gain increased access to AI insights enabling them to make healthier?lifestyle choices and pursue needed preventative interventions.

“Today’s healthcare is far better described as sick care.”

In many other ways, health care could soon look dramatically different. Using AI tools, health care providers could offer individualized care, based on recommendations from each patient’s electronic health record and other health and biological data. AI systems could collect data at sites ranging from the bathroom to the bedroom, without people even noticing, and create dynamic treatment plans in real time, including diet and exercise programs based on factors such as the person’s gut microbiome.

AI could also suggest individualized medical treatments and health interventions, such as customized medications and, potentially, personalized cancer vaccines. And soon, AI systems will even be able to generate a profile for each infant after birth, sequencing the child’s entire genome and predicting potential short- and long-term?health risks. Expanding health care with AI could have enormous positive effects on health and longevity, but it could also give rise to a slew of negative outcomes, such as privacy violations and false positives, and these risks must be mitigated.

Soon, biotechnology will be indispensable for feeding the world.

The future of agriculture — like its past — lies in radical biotechnology. People have been genetically modifying agricultural plants since ancient times, first through propagating seed varieties and more recently through genetic modification. These advancements have enabled the human population to increase from just a few million 10,000 years ago to billions today. Primarily as a result of the use of synthetic fertilizers to produce crops, introduced in the 1960s, the global population is fast approaching 10 billion. However, advanced agriculture has come at a price: pollution, water issues, and massive greenhouse gas emissions. As the world’s population continues to multiply, sustainably producing enough food for all will require leveraging the tools of genetics, biotechnology, and AI.

“Thinking differently about how to make our agriculture far more productive using more marginal and less total land isn’t just fascinating science, it’s also an essential investment in our future survival.”

With the Earth’s expanding population, researchers anticipate consumption of domesticated crops will rise 50% by 2050. To grow enough conventionally produced food would require the conversion of vast stretches of wild areas into farmland, necessitate the use of gigantic amounts of water, and exacerbate the impacts of?climate change. But failure to feed humanity’s growing population would have dire outcomes, too: mass?hunger, worsening socioeconomic?inequity, and increasing violence. Bioengineered crops that produce more in less space could help?feed future humans while requiring less land and inputs, and researchers are already looking into ways of engineering domesticated plants and their growth process. For example, scientists have created synthetic microbial soil communities that help fertilize crops and increase yields, reducing dependence on chemical fertilizers.

Sustainably satisfying humanity’s desire for meat will require the transformation of industrial farming.

Thanks to biotechnology, humans will soon radically change the way they eat — and they will have to. If people continue eating meat at their current pace, by 2050,?the total consumption of land-based animals will rise from today’s 340 billion kilograms (750 billion pounds) to between 460 and 570 billion tons.?Such an increase would be unsustainable, as the carbon dioxide emissions released would cause humanity to exceed global warming targets, resulting in misery for billions of people.?If farming practices remain relatively unchanged, farmers will likely need to double their antibiotics usage on farm animals, which could give rise to new antibiotic-resistant?superbugs that would threaten human health.

Encouraging people to eat less meat could reduce the harmful?impacts of industrial farming on people, the planet, and farm animals.?But humans are unlikely to give meat up entirely, so researchers are seeking alternative solutions. They’ve already created genetically engineered cows that produce more milk, salmon that grow faster, pigs whose waste does less damage to ecosystems, and animals that can tolerate wider extremes of temperature.

“There’s something particularly haunting about the way industrial animal farming tends to treat domesticated animals as industrial outputs rather than sentient beings.”

But less cruel — and more radical — alternatives are also emerging, such as growing “cultivated” meat in a lab without raising and killing animals at all. Lab-grown meat might not seem so strange in the future, and may not even taste that different from the real thing.?In his lab at the University of Maastricht, scientist Mark Post was a trailblazer in creating lab-grown meat from stem cells. His team introduced the first cultured meat burger to the world in 2013.?Since then, numerous companies have begun to tinker with innovative ways to grow cultivated meat scalably.

In the sustainable grocery store of the future, you will also likely see an uptick in people buying plant-based meat alternatives, reducing their climate footprint while obtaining the nutrition they need at an affordable cost. Meat eaters will treat meat from real animals more as a luxury, paying premium prices for sustainably farmed meat.

A global circular bioeconomy is emerging, where manufacturers source materials primarily from plants and then recycle or reuse them.

As profoundly as modern technology is transforming agriculture, it’s reshaping industrial production too. As a result, humanity is shifting away from extractive capitalism and toward a “circular bioeconomy,” where familiar products that currently are made from materials mined from the earth are instead created from bioengineered plant materials. In the circular bioeconomy, biofuels replace fossil fuels, waste products are valued as raw materials, and products and materials constantly cycle through use and reuse.

Investing in biotechnology can boost?the global economy while helping nations transition from fossil fuels to more sustainable biofuels,?a vital necessity given that fossil fuel availability will soon peak. Researchers are currently bioengineering biofuels through new approaches that involve the genetic engineering of plants to produce biomass that transforms readily into energy, as well as processes that enable this transformation. For example, CelA, a synthetic enzyme, facilitates the breakdown of plants into simple sugars, which in turn can become biofuels via fermentation.

“This intersection of natural biology and human engineering has the potential to unlock a next phase of economic development and growth.”

Nations are developing strategies for the emerging global bioeconomy. The UK government announced plans in 2018 to build “a world-class bioeconomy [that] will transform our economy by removing our dependence on finite fossil resources.” China has a five-year Bioindustry Development Plan, and the governments of India and many African countries are on board with the bioeconomy, too.

Biotechnology offers enormous economic potential — the Special Competitive Studies Project, a US-based nonpartisan advocacy group, refers to biotech as “a multi-trillion dollar general purpose sector.” But to achieve the potential for job creation, profits, and boosting nations’?GDP, the race to invest in the biotechnology sector also requires carefully mitigating potential risks and navigating the challenges of embracing an entirely new?economic model.

The emergence of practices such as?DIY biohacking poses significant risks.

As scientists and engineers work to create fantastic new innovations by manipulating living systems through AI, genetics, and biotechnology, society must consider all the ways they could get it wrong. For example, while scientists across the world work to save human lives by manipulating virus genomes — such as during the coronavirus crisis —the development of this capability also gives scientists the power to engineer viruses that can harm human health.

“The same capabilities we are rapidly developing in our efforts to make our world better also have the very real potential to make it, if we are not careful, a lot worse.”

And not only scientists. One emerging threat involves the rise of “do-it-yourself” biology, where individuals work in an increasingly decentralized manner and share knowledge of synthetic biology with one another.?It’s easy to imagine a future where people upload genomic information to sharable databases, while AI modeling tools become more powerful and easier to work with, enabling practically anyone to tinker with life outside a formal research setting.?In fact, many DIYers are already collaborating in “biohacker spaces,” sharing tools such as gene sequencing, synthesizing, and editing equipment. Society must prepare for the potential of nonstate actors using AI and biotech tools to create a bioweapon, for example, as well as the possibility that well-intentioned biohackers might simply make mistakes.

A global effort is needed to foresee and minimize potential harms of the revolution in biotech, genetics, and AI, and ensure that it benefits mankind.

The revolutions in genetics, biotechnology, and AI will require a collective response. It’s time for humanity to update its “global operating system,” acknowledging the interdependence of all people, and for individuals and organizations around the world to take responsibility in tackling complex?challenges, existential threats,?and wicked problems together on a global scale.

“Whether we like or even accept it or not, our fates are intertwined with each other, with all living beings, and with the health of our planet in our increasingly interconnected world.”

In one example of the kind of spirit that’s needed, numerous private individuals across the globe have aligned under the social movement OneShared.World. The group’s “Declaration of Interdependence” states: “We seek to promote the democratic expression of our common humanity as an essential pillar of our global power structure and drive real and meaningful change in practices, structures, systems, and outcomes ensuring tangible progress toward addressing our greatest collective needs.” Much effort will be required to unite humanity in the coming years, and the OneShared.World movement is a step in the right direction.