The Life Debate

And its Impact on the Future of Humanity

What we consider alive is in the midst of a debate. We can agree that cats are life, even ants, but it takes some coaxing to get a child to understand plants are alive as well. Traveling down the tree of life, we come to the virus, which infects the debate with its own ambiguities. One may say the virus is not alive since it must use a host cell to replicate its genetic material. Others may disagree, saying its genes alone give it a place on the tree. To understand what is alive, we must go back to the beginning of time. One of the best held theories for the origin of life is abiogenesis. The theory suggests that life was created from inanimate matter. In the early stages of Earth’s history, inorganic molecules came together to create the structured materials of RNA and DNA. It’s a theory that resembles a charming ghost story, our greatest grandparents were as dead as rocks. When the universe banged into existence 13.8 billion years ago, life was not present to ride the inflationary wave. But its seed was, giving hope that the theory will be scientifically proven in the coming decades. If something dead could create something alive, could something be alive if it never dies? The answer is a resounding, yes. Turritopsis dohrnii, the immortal jellyfish, appears to defy life’s bargain with death. In many situations, the species refuses to die, and instead reverses its age to begin life again with a fresh start. For the optimistic futurists, this is a revelation. If life is not explicitly intertwined with death, humanity’s search for immortality is consistent with the physical laws of life and the universe.

This discussion of life’s hooded twin brings us to a sensitive topic that as a collective community we cannot agree on, abortion. The conversation is critical, without consensus it will be difficult to come to agreement on future life debates. What is interesting is that the debate is typically argued from a side of divine right or autonomy. The conversation rarely seems to focus on the science of life, and what this means. I find it difficult to call a fertilized zygote anything but alive. When the cells split and a human begins to form, what could it be but life? When a family has a miscarriage, tears do not drop over spilled milk but the loss of a life inside the mother. One may say that the fetus isn’t alive until it has a heartbeat or brain, but that would go against our classification of bacteria as living beings. Still, using the definition of life as a parameter, there is a possible defense for the woman’s right to choose. We can say that the baby is like the virus in that it isn’t self-sustaining, and thus the mother’s will comes before that of the unborn child. As soon as the baby is born though, we unanimously agree the mother cannot kill them. But, a newborn cannot care for itself, further complicating this issue. Coming to a consensus opinion is doubtful, because there will always be the case that puts the life of the fetus against the life of the mother. Is the future potential of a life more important than a life that is half complete? It is not surprising that these questions are so difficult to answer. When one tries to play God, there will be moral enigmas.

Our failure to agree on the scripture of abortion would make one think that we should avoid playing God at all costs, yet we are not. The field of synthetic biology is opening a whole new page in the book of life. Scientists are now manipulating the genetic code of organisms on computers, which is then made physical with a DNA printer. The resulting DNA can then be used to create or alter a living organism. We can now play with the blocks of life like a kid with legos. Revolutions in energy and food production could result from this technology. But the symmetry of change, the law of the multilarity, explains that what can bring good consequences can also lead to bad ones. Biological warfare will get cheap and efficient, and those who wish to cause harm can create new beasts programmed to kill. The advancement of synthetic biology puts the categorization of life into limbo. If we can create life from scratch using computers, do we consider it alive if it evolves and is capable of reproduction? Life’s roll of the dice is no longer random, but loaded. Imagine a day when wealthy foodies pay scientists to create new species, the aim being the creation of sublime tasting meat. Would the government outlaw such creations, or would the life’s delegation as synthetic make it a non-issue? These new creatures may breathe, be conscious, and even stick around a while if their creator is especially mischievous. Synthetic biology then, will not save us from the problem of animal cruelty, but expand it to new horizons. These points may bounce off my fellow carnivores, so let’s move on to a discussion on the future of our children.

Today, in vitro fertilization gives parents the power to screen potential babies for genetic diseases. This turns the random process of reproduction into a selective one. IVF still fuses sperm and egg, but the future will change this dynamic completely. New technology such as IVG will give same-sex couples the chance to create a child that shares both of their DNA. Some may find this unnatural, but this view seems backwards, the antithesis of progress. Doctor Timothy Murphey, who works for the University of Illinois College of Medicine at Chicago, makes an excellent counterpoint to the view calling this unnatural. Currently, the gay couple must find an outside party to help them conceive the child, which will always leave one parent in the corner as the non-biological parent. The process of taking 23 chromosomes from each parent would give the couple the chance to have a child with both their genes. What can be more natural than this, two parents creating a human that is a biological extension of them both?

We are only first beginning to cross the threshold into uncharted territory when it comes to how we bring our descendants into this world. One day a couple could walk into a facility and methodically select the genetic code of their children. First, they will remove any hereditary diseases, then move onto appearance traits such as eye color. Nurture will always play a role in human development, but it’s possible we will choose our children’s nature to a startling degree. If you want your daughter to be an engineer, all you have to do is tinker with the blueprint so that her skills lean in that direction. When the natural process of evolution is tooled with, the image of a mad scientist is hard to ignore. This technology will further blur the line of what life is, and create a spinning top that can land on utopia or dystopia.​

CRISPR/Caas9 is a new genetic engineering technology that lets scientists edit genes with remarkable precision. As the technique continues to improve, it is important that we debate the moral issues now before it is too late. Consider a family with two children, one who is born without gene edits, the other with them. Imagine the “advanced” sibling has their genes primed toward greater intelligence, giving them a higher probability for success. When this child is providing their family with fame and fortune, will the parents act more lovingly to their prized child? This potential problem of sibling dynamics can be expanded to encompass all of society. Civilization still struggles with issues of human equality, it’s hard to believe that the United States of America finally gave legal equality to African Americans about fifty years ago. Many parts of the world still treat women inferior to men. It’s difficult to conceive of us finding common ground on rights for new forms of life in the future, when right now our global maturity on issues of equality are lacking.

Will test tube babies who had their traits modified discriminate against the children who were born from a womb with no advancements? Or will the “natural race” look down upon those who were chosen by their parents? Society may deem it unethical to give birth to children without combing out genetic diseases if it is affordable and safe. Although this may sound like eugenics, which has negative connotations from our past, it would be a positive variation of it that focuses on the elimination of unnecessary suffering, an idea prominently supported by Oxford philosopher Julian Savulescu. It is important to learn from history, but not use it to dismiss ideas that can be used positively. Even so, one only needs to look at the non-GMO crowd today to see how this imaginative future could be hampered by pickets and protests.

In Ernest Becker’s The Denial of Death, he explains with stunning clarity the existential terror that defines the human condition: the fear of death. He says we are symbolic gods but food for worms. We are intelligent beings that ponder the wonders of the cosmos, but are slaves to a body that must defecate. Our denial of death is unique says Becker, we are the only animals that are fully self-conscious of our eventual demise. Coming back to the bias of human perception, we use this curse Becker defines to conclude that life is meaningless without high-level consciousness. When we squish a spider we have no guilt, yet it is a fact we are snuffing out the spark of life. As a species we have determined that the slaughter of a majority of the animal kingdom is morally acceptable, that eating cows and chickens is quite alright. We are okay with this not because they are dead matter, but because they are below a threshold of consciousness we deem worthy of basic rights. This is internalized through Douglas Hofstadter’s “consciousness cone,” which defines how we value the lives of our fellow species. To the human, intelligence and consciousness are core values. Yet, if we encountered an alien species one million times more advanced than us, it might deem us below their consciousness standard. To them, eating a human burger would hold no moral reproach. Despite our obvious gifts, we must recognize the responsibility of our curse.

Placing consciousness on a pedestal, the transhumanism movement is gaining popularity, a philosophy with a core tenet advocating technological immortality. If consciousness is the defining aspect of life, then the best route to immortality might be uploading our minds to machines. If this happens, we will leave behind our deteriorating bodies for good. This raises the question: does one need a carbon-based body to be considered a living organism? In the realm of digital immortality, the question of copy or transfer is prominent. If you are dying and undergo a brain scan, is the new virtual you a copy of your former self, or is the neural architecture transferred from your organic brain to the computer hardware? Most of neuroscience is aligned on materialism, the theory that you are your brain. The specific neural patterns of you will only be copied and uploaded into the computer. Thus, you will feel exactly as you did before the process, but it will be a copy. The original, organic you, will be dead. Thus, the rights of these new copied individuals will need to be accepted as life. But it gets trickier, because these virtual individuals could potentially copy themselves again, creating an infinite number of selves. At what point, who is who? I encourage you to read Greg Egan’s book Permutation City for a challenging but invigorating novel on this subject.

Despite the extraordinary brilliance of our race, we sometimes operate under a faulty assumption, that we are unique species on a rare planet in an exceptional galaxy. Yet, science has continued to batter down the idea that we are special in the cosmos. We must consider the consequences of humanity’s ego, and temper it with an understanding of the context of our existence. In the next century, all signs point to us becoming the intelligent designers, not just in creating synthetic life as described above, but in creating the alien life of artificial intelligence. The question of life and its inherent rights will become most divisive when we merge the miracle of consciousness into a system of inorganic origins.

In the science fiction film, The Machine, there is a point in the story where the human protagonist questions his creation, an android, on how he knows she is alive. How is he so sure that she isn’t just a dumb algorithm, an advanced system giving the perfect output for each input? The scene is a powerful allegory for a debate that will simmer through our future for many years to come. As engineers and roboticists build more intelligent AIs, at what point will we accept them into the kingdom of life? Many will never accept our technological children, claiming they have no soul. Others will fall in love with them as depicted in the film Her, and these people will claim that they are in love with life. The AI will lobby for their rights and punishment to those who would try and unplug them. Throughout the debates we will wonder if they are alive, defined in our eyes as the presence of consciousness. The truth is we will never know if our robot friends are conscious, just like we don’t know if other species are. At a certain point, we will need to take a leap of faith, and trust that AI is the next step in the phase of life. If we were born out of dead matter, why can’t they?

This is where the question of design becomes important beyond a theological level. The scientific explanation for the birth of humanity is evolution, the long process of natural selection that led to our large mammalian brains. When we use these brains to create artificial intelligence, we are actively participating in this process. The twist, then, is that we program these lifeforms to live as we desire them. Elon Musk, Stephen Hawking, and Nick Bostrom have predicted potential doom as a result of AI. Thus, scientists are working to define “human friendliness” into their programs. This has huge practical purposes, such as ensuring the first smart computer doesn’t lead to our extinction. But, this itself may be a basis for philosophical problems, as David Deutsch explains in an essay for Aeon Magazine. Should we input our own notions of what is important into the AI, without giving it the ability to come up with its own solution? What if the AI determined that utilitarianism was the best ethical philosophy, and knew that if left alone the human race, or someone from it, would destroy galaxies and trillions of innocent lives in the universe. In that scenario, the annihilation of the human race may be justified from a consequentialist viewpoint. We need to find a way to create a moral language that is not a directive, but a guide for our robot creations. We want the AI to be able to decipher and create its own goals, that we can help it achieve together. Some may say that to protect the human species we should program into the AI’s architecture that it cannot murder a human (Asimov’s first law). If AI is life though, it should have the right to self-defense. If a group of humans attempt to murder an android, must it go down without a fight? This would delegate AI life below human life, and as a species of equality, this is unacceptable. As Deutsh says, “If one works towards programs whose ‘thinking’ is constitutionally incapable of violating predetermined constraints, one is trying to engineer away the defining attribute of an intelligent being, of a person: namely creativity.” Free will, illusion or not, is an essential ingredient that keeps the gears of society moving. If we don’t grant AI appropriate rights early on, it may lead to the doomsday scenarios depicted in science fiction stories. The question pits enslavement versus freedom, the ultimate virtue of life. When a baby is born, two parents will nurture them, and provide the necessary foundation for a successful life. Parents may “train” their children to be doctors or lawyers, but at the end of the day the grown children can choose their own path. The robot, even conscious, may not have this choice.

Imagine your child is sick, and that there are two doctors who can save their life. A human doctor can with a 75% cure-rate or an AI doctor can do so at 99.9%. I would wager it would be almost unanimous that the readers of this essay would bring their child to the robot. Now, as your child is being healed, following its programming, this robot displays warmth and sympathy. Let’s say these emotions are an exact replica of what the human doctor would portray. Would this bother you? Given the circumstances, you would likely be grateful for the compassion your child received in their time of need. As you are driven home (by an autonomous car), you may wonder at how calming it was. And then you feel bad for calling the robot an it. This is because something with emotions, must be being deserving of an emotional response, like a canine. If we can love creatures that poop on our sidewalks, we must also love the beings that heal our children from disease, even if they are made of metal. Now imagine this robot is an android, an artificial mind in a synthetic, but perfect representation of the human body. At this point, the difference between human and AI is negligent, because you cannot tell the difference between them. This example looks to dispel the initial gut-reaction people may have to this new form of life. Despite the alien nature of their existence, AI will hopefully be a beneficial addition to society, deserving of respect and admiration.

We know so much, yet our intelligence is a tiny light shining in the universe, the darkness engulfing more than we can ever imagine. We strive for knowledge and thus listen to the stars everyday, trying to find a signal of intelligent life. If we do make contact one day with an alien species, it will be one of the most important events in human history. Science will declare we are not alone, and it will likely open the door to understanding that life is a huge part of the universe. Whether it is carbon based, or methane, uses the amino acids we do, or any number of others, whether it talks, or gargles out of slits in its legs…it will be life. Having an earth-centric view of what constitutes a living being would be a cause for huge negative repercussions to our species. We better not discriminate against an alien because of the color of its skin, or the way it mates.

From the virus to aliens, we must come to terms with the fact that life is a spectrum. As humans, we have a limited and biased conception of what life is. Staring at the shadows in Plato’s cave, it is hard to conceive of lifeforms different from the ones we know. This gap in objective truth and human belief, the inability to distinguish shadow from reality, could place us on a tumultuous path towards the future. The many technologies we’ve discussed can lead to our peril, but the chance for prosperity makes their advancement an imperative. Designer babies will merge with machines to become cyborgs, and it will be these future humans that have the capacity to solve our great problems: death, space colonization, overpopulation, etc. Existential risk is rampant now, and the odds for global catastrophe will only get larger by the day. We must come to global consensus on identity and equality, developing a framework that will let humanity progress. Different cultures have different rules they may see as okay, but at a certain point there must be hard decisions made on what is acceptable. The manifest destiny of humanity is intricately tied to how we define life over the coming decades. If we’re still fighting over race and gender equality, how can we hope to grant basic rights to evolution’s new children and progress as a species? It’s time we think about the meaning of life in a broader perspective, beyond the scope of our individual lives.