The descent of man
Recently, I sat in a pub and idly watched some international fashion show on the shiny new plasma screen. Larger than life itself, exquisite in their metallic glitter and rubber, the models propelled themselves down the catwalk with strange yet gracefully angular movements. All had the same alert, but dispassionate expression. There are many ways to interpret this scene, but my immediate response was to realise how deeply we all want to be robots.
Why? Why on earth would we want to become robots? The very word itself conjures up images of clunky mechanical men who have no understanding of even the simplest emotion. Robbie, Marvin, B-9 from Lost in Space: generally amiable but deeply flawed parodies of ourselves. If anything, it would seem that, in our minds at least, the robots have always wanted to become us. Throughout popular culture – from Golem and Pinocchio to Data and Bicentennial Man – our mechanical creations have supposedly envied our humanity. Our very life.
But, sadly, that life has its problems. It also brings death and disease, pain and suffering. Yes, there’s the emotion of happiness, but also one of unbearable sorrow. Not to mention fear. Real robots know nothing of this. They are free. Free from doubt, death, pain, confusion and fear. Physically powerful, dexterous to within micrometers, and oh so clear in their ‘minds’. If they fail at a task, they just pick themselves up and try again. They have direction. They are pure. They have robot dharma.
You can see the attraction can’t you? How good would it be to exist like that? If only you didn’t have to be so… well… robotic.
Be careful what you wish for. Three streams of scientific development are now moving towards their almost inevitable convergence. To summarize:
- robots are steadfastly developing to the point where they will be treated at least as our behavioural equals.
- Computing power is increasingly up to the task of modelling the potential scenarios of extremely complex natural phenomena, and
- humans are now in the final phase of a quest begun as far back as the Renaissance: the process of reverse-engineering themselves.
Up until now, we have been the way we are because we have evolved to be this way. In his seminal work The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin described for the first time how this process of our evolution took place. Today, it’s both sad and amusing when creationists get hot under the collar about all this. Why? Because it’s already a dead issue! Humanity is on the cusp of entering its ‘post-evolutionary’ phase.
First a bit of background. Within any species, natural variations will occur within the population. Some of these will be better adapted to the environment and/or more likely to produce offspring. So, over several generations, the genes of these variants will tend to predominate and the characteristics of the species as a whole will change (evolve) very slightly. The offspring of these new variants will also vary and so the cycle continues bringing small incremental steps of change over millions of years.
Now, a cornerstone of modern molecular biology is the principle that this natural selection is essentially a ‘blind’ process [1]. There is a strictly one-way flow of information from genome (DNA code) to phenome (proteins, cells, organs, bodies). Information cannot flow back the other way from the environment, through the body to the genetic code carried within the cells. In short, our genes can’t learn from our individual successes and failures. You might think it would be handy for the evolution of a species if they could but, no such luck! Natural selection doesn’t care about evolution.
The alternative possibility that individuals could actually inherit the acquired characteristics of their parents was proposed in 1809 by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a natural historian and forerunner of Darwin. Today, ‘inheritance of acquired characteristics’, or Lamarckianism is seen as a thoroughly discredited explanation for evolution. Ironic, as we shall soon see.
So what about genetically modified crops? Here we have a company like Monsanto directly altering the genome of a species of, say, wheat to produce a whole new species variant within a single generation – and patenting the results. Information is now flowing backwards, from the environment of the lab to the genome of the experimental species. More correctly, I should say that information is now flowing backwards from the marketing department, through the lab, to the genome. Welcome to the new Lamarkianism: inheritance of acquired – as in purchased – characteristics.
The ‘elephant in the room’ for most scientists in the field is the obvious question of whether we might start doing this to people – genetically modifying ourselves. I don’t think it’s a question of if, but merely when. The trigger will probably be the popular one used when introducing controversial measures: kids. Suffering kids. If you could prevent future generations of kids from suffering that terrible disease/deformity/disability/syndrome, simply by altering one gene, why on earth wouldn’t you? For god’s sake where’s your humanity?
We have now mapped the entire human genome. Next step is to fluently read it. Next step after that is to start writing some of it. The editing process begins. [2]
At first, the procedures will be what you’d call ‘humanitarian’ but, of course, it won’t stop at that. Those surgeons who saved lives when they started using anaesthetic in the mid 19th century couldn’t possibly have imagined (or condoned) the idea of plastic surgery creating a Joan Rivers. Perceptions of what is ‘acceptable’ gradually change.
So far so good. Time to bring on the robots.
A separate, but related development has also been taking place. Around about the time that Frank and Bernadette are paying to ensure that their future little Jason is free from potential medical maladies, robots will have ‘evolved’ to a stage where they generate all the complex effects of an ‘introduced species’[3]. Interaction between the separate species of human and robot will be complex in ways we can’t possibly imagine today, but one thing is certain: the interaction will be intimate – not only ‘sexually’, but technologically and medically. We’ll exchange a lot more than bodily fluids. Tissue, organs, neural network programming, biomechanical components and, of course, editable DNA will be shared. But, of course, no-one will use the H-word in polite conversation for quite some time.
Hybrid.
The first problem with all this is merely amusingly grotesque. It’s simply the danger that human evolution will degenerate into ‘design by a committee’ and we might all wind up looking like the proverbial bunch of camels. Because the wonderful thing about natural selection is that it’s the real ‘intelligent design’. It selects designs (individual variants within populations of reproducing species) purely on their merits alone. Either you produce offspring or you don’t. End of story. It’s not politically correct, or fair, or stylistically consistent, or anything else that conforms to society’s shifting desires, fashions, morality, politics or value judgements. It’s cetainly not democratic. It just is. It’s how we got here.
The second problem is somewhat more sinister. When the information flows backwards from the world to our DNA code, the crucial issues become: which particular information, who gets to decide and, most importantly, who owns the information.
In the post-evolutionary world, the direction of human development will be limited only by what’s technically feasable – or to be more blunt, what’s for sale. Because, it’s vital to understand that almost all of this will only be possible in a world where genetic code is considered to be intellectual property.
Imagine a world where competing commercial, religious, military and legislative concerns determine which direction(s) our ‘evolution’ proceeds. Imagine a world where the act of procreation is essentially a leasing agreement. Imagine a world where individual humans cease to be life-forms as such and come to resemble manufactured products. Products that sell themselves to … themselves.
Oh, but they’ll be such exquisitely beautiful products! Products with all the latest features, interconnected, free from fear, uncertainty, pain and suffering, moving with strange yet gracefully angular movements, alert and dispassionate. But products, nevertheless.
Who’s that at the door at this late hour?
Oh, it’s a salesman!
Notes
1. "Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all." Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 1986
2. For an another view, see: Our Synthetic Futures: What might happen if we repurpose biology to our own ends? by Rudy Rucker Newsweek May 27, 2007.
3. A lot of work is now being done on the possibility of 'self-aware' robots. See for example Christophe Menant's discussions on the science of consciousness.
