What do we need to do to avoid the apocalypse, the extinction of our species, a planet without any humans?
Yes, I’m still talking about science. About real, hard bioscience. The science of the biorevolution. Even though many of the technologies of the biorevolution sound like science fiction: gene editing, artificial intelligence, synthetic biology.
Scientists employ these technologies to make human life longer and healthier, and to shape nature into a more human-friendly environment.
We are at the center of this revolution, trying to bend the rules of biology to our will.
The rules that govern biological systems form the very essence of our existence; they are the rules by which we live and die. Humanity stands as the pioneering species that consciously defies these rules, transcending the grip of our biological imperatives like natural selection and Darwinian evolution.
Our journey on this path commenced thousands of years ago when we began to domesticate, or some might say, allowed ourselves to become domesticated by the plants and animals surrounding us, marking the start of our long-term symbiotic relationship with wheats and wolves and cattle, a relationship that altered our destinies as much as that of the planet.
The biotechnological advances of the late 20th and early 21st centuries—genetic screening, gene editing, neuroprosthetics—have catapulted this transition from a horse-drawn carriage to a rocket's pace. These technologies, in their pursuit of altering the course of evolution, fundamentally stretch the boundaries that have defined life on this planet for eons. Scientists now craft entirely new biological entities—organisms that live by their unique rules, propagate, evolve, and proliferate, heedless of the artificial boundaries and policies set by humans.
The biorevolution has become too fast and too complex for regulators and politicians to understand and too powerful for scientists to self-regulate.
Will the biorevolutions and its technologies lead us into a utopia in which physical and mental suffering, hunger, disease, and even aging and death become things of the past? Or are the changes we're making to human biology the first step toward our downfall as a species? Will they usher in an age of modern-day eugenics, exacerbating social inequality and erasing biodiversity?
While humans aren't great at foreseeing the consequences of their long-term actions, they excel at envisioning future doom scenarios—ranging from genetically selected superhumans in "Gattaca" to genetically-modified humans in "X-Men" to the myriad different versions of the zombie apocalypse.
Understanding where modern bioscience is headed is important to everyone because it will affect everyone. Viral diseases and bioweapons, methods for genetic selection and genetic upgrades, artificial intelligence algorithms, and neuroprosthetics will affect everyone. They will affect our understanding of humanity and our destiny as a species.
To avoid the apocalypse, the extinction of our species, a planet without any humans, we need to understand those technologies, need to apply them with care and try to consider the long term consequences of our actions.