Design children and their children's children: as AI and genomics affect reproduction?

If individually, the technology has not evolved as fast as we wanted, now we were at a crossroads when we have to explore the points of convergence technologies. As is happening in robotics is determined by what is happening in the field of 3D printing? What can be achieved by applying the latest achievements in the field of quantum computing to nanotechnology? Among all these lines there is one particularly interesting intersection: artificial intelligence and genomics. In each of these areas has been steady progress, but Jamie Metzel believe, that their convergence will bring us closer to unknown territory, about which we dreamed, reading science fiction. "Will start the tug of war, and it will be a competition between the realities of our biology and its embedded constraints and scope of our aspirations," he said.

Metzel is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. Last week, he spoke about his thoughts concerning genomics and AI, but also about where their convergence will lead us.

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Life as we know it

Metzel explains that genomics as a field has developed slowly but quickly gained momentum. In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick identified the double-helix structure of DNA and realized that the order of base pairs, contains a treasure trove of genetic information. It was the book of life, we found it.

In 2003, when the human genome Project was completed (after 13 years and $ 2.7 billion spent), we learned that the genome consists of 3 billion base pairs and the location of specific genes in our chromosomes. The book of life not simply exist — it can be read.

Fifteen years — in 2018 — we have already mastered the skills precise editing of genes of plants, animals and people. Things are changing rapidly and pushes us to new boundaries. Forget about reading the book of life — we learn to write it.

"Read, write, and hack — it becomes obvious that human beings are merely another form of information technology, and how our information technology became exponential curve of discovery, in the same way we join ourselves," says Metzel. "And this is criss-cross with a revolution in AI".

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the Science of life plus machine learning

In 2016, the program AlphaGo from DeepMind beat the best player in the world. In 2017 appeared AlphaGo Zero: unlike AlphaGo, AlphaGo Zero was not trained on the basis of the previous games in th, and just studied the rules of the game of go — and for four days defeated the program AlphaGo.

Our own biology, of course, much more complicated game of go, and we should start from this. "System of our own biology that we're trying to understand is massive, but more importantly — understandable".

Take a standard set of rules of our biology, genome data and, eventually, maybe even surpass nature itself.

Many countries are starting to produce such data. The British National Health Service recently announced a plan to sequence the genomes of five million Britons over the next five years. In the US research program All of Us sequanorum million Americans. China is even more aggressive in his approach to the sequencing of its population and aims to sequence half of all newborns by the year 2020.

"We get massive pools of sequenced genomic data," says Metzel. "A revelation is born in the comparison of sequenced genomes of individuals with their electronic medical records, and ultimately, with their records of life."

To Get people to voluntarily open access to their data — that is another question. But here is where the lack of strict protection of data privacy in China can be a significant advantage.

For comparison of genotypes and phenotypes in the scale of first millions, then hundreds of millions, then billions, according to Metzel, we need artificial intelligence and analytical tools of big data and the algorithms that are far superior known to us. These tools will allow us to move from accurate medicine to predictive medicine, so we will know exactly where and when ready to encounter a variety of diseases, and to prevent their occurrence.

But when we unlock their own genetics, the case is not only and not so much in health care. Ultimately it is about who and what we are — people. We will talk about the identity.

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Design children and their children

According to Metzel, the most serious application of our geneticheskogo knowledge is the selection of embryos.

Currently, the procedure of in vitro fertilization (IVF) allow to extract about 15 oocytes, fertilize them, and then carry out genetic testing prior to implantation; at the moment you can learn how to look diseases associated with single gene mutation, and simple traits like hair color or eyes. When we get to millions and then billions of people with sekvenirovanie genomes, we will receive information about the genetics of scale, and will be able to make more savvy choices.

Imagine visiting the fertility clinic in 2023. You give a piece of skin or a blood sample, and the use of gametogenesis in vitro (IVG) your skin cells or blood become eggs or sperm, even if you are infertile, which can then be combined into embryos. Tens of thousands of embryos, created from artificial gametes, give a few cells, then these cells sequeiros. The gene sequence will tell you aboutthe probability of occurrence of specific traits and diseases. "When the genetic basis is everywhere, we can understand more high level of accuracy, how healthy the child will grow".

This, in his opinion, could lead to wild and frightening consequences: if you take 1000 eggs and choose the one with optimal genetic sequences, you can then "marry" your embryo with someone else who has done similar things on other genetic lines. "Your five-day embryo and a foreign five-day embryo to have a baby in the IVG process," says Metzel. "Then this child will be the child with another five-day embryo from a different genetic line, and it is possible to continue and continue".

Sounds crazy, isn't it? But Hey, that's not all. As told to Jason Pontine this year in Wired magazine, "the technology of gene editing, like CRISPR-Cas9, will make it relatively easy to repair, add, or delete genes in the IVG process, eliminating the disease or bringing improvements that ripple through the entire genome of the child. This may all sound like science fiction, but for those who follow the research, a combination of genes and IVG edit it seems not just likely — inevitable development".

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All mad just

Stepping on the slippery slope of editing genes and the mating of the embryos, we will go dystopian in the race to create the perfect human. If someone puts so much time and effort in the selection of their embryos, we ask the question Metzel, as he would choose the marriage partner for their children? IVG will allow him to speed up evolution.

"We all need to become part of a comprehensive, integrated, global dialogue about the future of our species," says Metzel. "Experts in the field of health care will become an important node in this." Last but not least in this dialogue may be a question of access to technologies such as IVG, is for us to take some steps to IVG of a tool for the rich minority became a tool for even more rich and even more of a minority, thereby swinging the inequality and further polarization of society?

As the Pontine, 40 years ago, IVG is also caused fear, confusion and resistance — and today in vitro fertilization is just as normal and common as millions of healthy babies that are created using this technology.

This will have to be adjusted. Because it's life. Agree? Tell us in our