At the World Youth Festival held in Sochi in October 2017, Russian President Vladimir Putin stunned those present with his statement and proximity to creating a person with given characteristics. Genetic programming and genetic algorithms as a tool for biotechnology are entering the existential path of development. The future has already arrived, and there are many examples of this. The world will enter the era of human genetic programming during our lifetime. Embedded genes of he alth and genius, the victory over hereditary diseases and the general upgrade of a person are no longer the illusions of science fiction writers. These are practical genetic programming technologies.
Barriers broken
It used to be a dogma that it was impossible to rewrite hereditary information on DNA. But now everything has changed. Nobel Prize in 2006received by molecular biologists E. Fire and K. Mellow for the discovery of a mechanism that allows you to turn on the functioning of any gene in the human genome - RNA interference. These are mechanisms for changing an already existing gene set. But nature itself has given us another mechanism of influence on our gene set. These are viruses - unique organisms that are able to rewrite the information of the host cell. It is they who, by means of reverse transcription, are able to bring something new into the DNA present in the cell. And the already altered DNA multiplies along with the host cells. Viral biotechnologies are one of the ways to develop human genetic programming according to given characteristics.
The first step has already been taken
An example of genetic programming today is doping for athletes, which the whole world of professional sports has started talking about. The genetic dope, repoxigen, is a DNA complex that codes for a protein produced by the kidneys, erythropoietin. The preparation also includes a system for delivering information to cells based on a vector virus. This protein is responsible for stimulating the formation of red blood cells. The connection is direct - more red blood cells, more oxygen in the tissues, better results. So far, this pharmacological discovery is just a product of closed laboratories, but the day is very close when genetic programming and modification will become a commercial product.
Human technologies and their tasks
Human technologies are many ways, the purpose of which was the modification of human genetics. The instrument of their action is quasi-chemical manipulations with DNA molecules. Today, human technologies are genetic programming of a person according to given characteristics, the technology of RNA interference and DNA recombination, cloning, transgenosis, nano-medicine technologies, information-media and computer-network clusters. The tasks of human technologies in solving many problems:
- Riding humanity from gene diseases.
- Life extension and selective selection of embryos.
- Improvement of the human genome with the transition to Homo tecnologoficus’a (post-humanity).
- Creating "perfect" and "medicated" babies.
- Psychogenomics, which hunts for the genes responsible for the formation of personality, its identity, psyche and behavior.
- Creating drugs that are exact copies of individual body substances.
And this is not a complete list of problems that humane biotechnologies will help to solve, thereby opening up new possibilities for human genetic programming.
The era of post-information
It is in such a period of development that humanity will enter in the near future. Biotechnology will enter our lives and become commonplace. Our children will read about hereditary diseases in history books, the birth rate will be taken under control, and evolution will be controlled by people. Man, as a self-reproducing biological system, will himself become a program. A system with the ability to fixbugs, availability of service folders, and opportunities for improvement. The gene program "death" will be replaced by "immortality", we will build programs for he alth, intelligence, and sexual attractiveness into the genome. And in the end, neuroimplants and human genetic programming will blur the lines between humans and machines.
Parallel world
And while bioengineers are working in the field of biological modifications, mathematicians and programmers are working in the field of genetic programming of artificial systems. And if in the 80-90s of the last century the terms "evolutionary computing" and "genetic algorithm" were still new, today the words "artificial intelligence" and "digital Darwinism" are used not only by specialists. The founder of genetic programming as applied to artificial systems, Stanford professor John Koza introduced the theory of "machine evolution" to the scientific community. Genetic algorithms work - that's what matters. How? The answer will be long and not entirely clear to non-specialists. Let's explain with an example.
Smart cars
In 2002, the "Life of Robots" pavilion worked in the British center "Magna". In this pavilion, twelve robots, created and working on the basis of genetic algorithms and digital evolution, fought for survival. Half of them themselves produced energy for their existence with the help of solar panels. They were called heliophages. The second half are predators, they were not endowed with such an ability and were charged only by catching a heliophage. Those robots that surviveddownloaded their programs into their descendant robots. The show did not last long - it was closed when one of the robots wised up and decided to escape from the pavilion. Then the war of man and machines did not start just because the fugitive was hit by a car in the parking lot.
Scary backgrounds
Smart artificial systems that operate with little or no human intervention hold many surprises. Sometimes disturbing and frightening. At the University of Sussex, the machine was tasked with using the evolutionary method and gene algorithms to grow an oscillator. The task was completed - the manufactured device gave out a periodic signal. But, as it turned out, he did not produce it himself, but caught the signals of nearby electronic devices and passed them off as his own. Will the next stage of digital evolution be a device that will use not electrical appliances, but us?
They could be smarter
In John Koza's company, Genetic Programming, based on the only (so far) homemade computer, consisting of a thousand Pentiums with characteristics of 350 megahertz, was able to repeat 15 inventions, and 6 of them received patents after 2000, and one even surpasses characteristics of a human counterpart.
These inventions belong to artificial intelligence, which works on the basis of genetic algorithms and digital evolution. How soon will patents be issued to machines? The results of electronic evolution are already present in Boeing 777 engines andstate-of-the-art antibiotics. Expert forecasts say that in the next 5-10 years, genetic programming will create more products than are already created and sold.
"Matrix" future
The current level of development of gene programming is still in its infancy. Autonomous cultivation of robots requires the latest technology, which is not yet available. But the indicator of the investment compass is aimed at financing computer, telecommunications and biological technologies. It's in that order. We finance the creation of the digital world ourselves. Digital technologies are developing and doing it rapidly. Just 40 years ago, the mobile phone existed in the imagination of science fiction writers, and today, almost every gadget has 8-megapixel cameras. But can the user of this phone explain how it works?
We shouldn't become cows
The digital world is replacing the biological one. Analogues of genes in our culture (memes), originating in imposed ideas, melodies, pictures, other mental viruses become the subject of evolution. All previous history has been subordinated to the creation of the most acceptable carrier of the mentioned memes. First there was a man. Then radio and television were added to it. And, finally, the Internet with programs capable of self-reproduction and work on errors. Our cute cows do not assume that they are created by us to serve the machine to receive milk from them. And whatever the cow thinks about it, youseen a free wild cow?
