Member-only story
The Prospect of Combining AI and Synthetic Biology
Could the merging of AI and synthetic biology keep humanity from rendering itself useless?
Barring some apocalyptic scenario, the future is all but certain to bring the outmoding of human beings. It is by no means a new occurrence. Machines have been performing tasks that could once only be performed by humans for decades. Toll workers and cashiers, factory workers and film projectionists, and a hundred other jobs have all been fully or partially disappeared by automation. In the future, there is virtually no profession that we cannot envision following the same trend. Even after the years of studying taken to attain an advanced degree, according to physicist Michio Kaku, a large part of a physician’s job (diagnostic work) will soon be performed by toilets.
The advent of AI is as exciting and teeming with possibilities as the technologies that spurred the Industrial Age once were. Equally potent technology awaits us in the world of biological manipulation opened to us by CRSPR. Scientists are already creating primitive lifeforms and accomplishing amazing things with gene therapy. The only thing more intriguing than the possibilities either of these technologies can offer individually is what may come of their combination.
