Life’s evolution follows a pattern of diversification and subsequent integration of diversity at higher levels of complexity. Throughout evolution this integration has predominantly been achieved through new forms of cooperation and symbiosis. It is time to reperceive life as a planetary process of cooperation in which a unified whole expressing itself on nested temporal and spatial scales of complexity evolves in intimate reciprocity as a living planet. Life is a regenerative community rooted in patters of symbiosis and cooperation that creates shared abundance and conditions to life. Competition clearly does exist, but in far smaller proportions than over our myopic focus on scarcity as the driver of evolution has led us to believe. Throughout its evolution, life itself has continued to create the conditions conductive for more divers and complex life to evolve.
Earth itself is about 4.5 billion years old. After some time to cool down a bit, the first evidence of life appeared on Earth about 3.8 billion years ago. Those earliest life forms were single-celled organisms similar to the ubiquitous bacteria alive today. Although they remain the simplest forms of life (note that viruses are not considered to be alive by most biologists), they are quite complex organisms. They can wall themselves off from the rest of their environment, metabolize external sources of food for energy, move around, replicate and evolve over generations.
There were two types of those earliest single-celled organisms: bacteria and archaea. Archaea differ from bacteria mainly in the types of cell walls they have, but basically are otherwise very similar. Archaea tend to like more extreme environments than bacteria, but they are everywhere including in our digestive tracts. Bacteria and archaea coexisted on Earth as the only organisms for about 2 billion years.
Then something amazing happened. Somehow, one species of archaea engulfed a species of bacteria and the bacteria remained as a living component of the archaea for the rest of evolution. That living component is a part of every plant and animal cell today and is known as mitochondria. Mitochondria are the energy producers for all of our cells. We couldn’t live without them. And since they are remnants of bacteria, they still contain some of the former bacterial DNA.
All of the archaea DNA which contained their genes became enclosed in an internal cell wall within each cell to create a nucleus. Archaea and bacteria have neither nuclei nor mitochondria. Together, these two features of cells emerged at roughly the same time to create a totally new type of cell: the eukaryote. That amazing combination of events to create the eukaryote cell is what I designate as The Second Great Transformation in evolution. What is so special about the eukaryote cell? It enabled the evolution of all plants and animals, including us. All plants and animals are multi-cellular organisms rather than single-celled. Multi-cellular organisms have different types of cells working together, like heart cells and brain cells. It is the eukaryote cell that enables this specialization and cooperation. A small number of our genes—37 to be exact—are housed in our mitochondria. Our other 20,000+ genes are in our cell nuclei.
We have had a total of three Great Transformations in the history of our evolution—each successive one dependent on the previous. First we had the emergence of life. Then, after two billion years, the eukaryote cell emerged leading to all plants and animals, including us. Finally after another 1.8 billion years the human brain grew to its current size and complexity, becoming the most complex organic structure in the known universe. We don’t know for sure what the exact path was to Homo sapiens, but we do know that these transformations from an apelike creature occurred over the past 7 million years For 98% of our time on the planet, though, other human species coexisted with us.
The next stage of human evolution is upon us. Just as modern Homo sapiens distinguished themselves from their prehistoric ancestors through their expanded cognitive and physical abilities, humanity is in the process of taking another big leap forward in cognition and physiology. This leap, however, won’t be due to evolutionary biology but rather as a direct result of technological enhancement.
“The complexity of the brain is simply awesome. Every structure has been precisely shaped by millions of years of evolution to do a particular thing, whatever it might be. It is not like a computer, with billions of identical transistors in regular memory arrays that are controlled by a CPU with a few different elements.”
The world as we know it is about to change, as we begin to prepare for the creation of a new human species. Understanding how this will occur is the basis for understanding the fourth great transformation: our creation of a new human species using artificial intelligence and genetic engineering. Until present, evolution by Darwinian natural selection has determined the emergence of all human species. That will never happen again. Homo sapiens has changed that. Once again, multiple human species will co-exist as a result of our advanced tools which, already, are changing the way we live, the way we eat, the way we treat illness and the way we have children. Understanding these impacts are key to understanding our evolutionary future.
Culture, in all its diversity, is an infinite reservoir from which we gain our knowledge of the world and which we tap into to find solutions to contemporary issues. Ever since the emergence of Homo Sapiens, human progress has evolved thanks to cultural diversity, through the exchange between human groups of discoveries and innovations, institutional experience and knowledge. Culture is in constant flux, evolving across time and space, adapting to the circumstances of the day. Each culture is therefore rich with insights provided by this vast accumulation of knowledge. Our cultural diversity is our greatest strength. It is the ultimate renewable resource for humankind and societies. As such, valuing diversity and protecting and promoting cultures as asset for societies is imperative.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) will be a key tool in the development of Homo nouveau in The Fourth Great Transformation. One of the problems in defining AI is our difficulty in defining human intelligence, which it is supposed to be emulating. In fact, neither AI nor human intelligence can be precisely defined. Nonetheless, AI software has become increasingly capable of emulating many functions considered aspects of human intelligence. One question is whether AI will ever equal or exceed human intelligence and, if it does, will that be a boom or a threat to humankind? Currently, AI systems primarily augment humans rather than replace them. That is often called IA—intelligence augmentation—rather than AI. There is still much work to be done to eliminate unanticipated biases that get built into AI systems and to make their decision processes understandable and transparent to users.
Genetic engineering will be the tool that we use to create Homo nouveau. AI will be the enabler of that tool. Darwinian evolution occurs as the result of random mutations in our genome, some of which lead to improved ability to procreate through a process called natural selection. The goal of genetic engineering is not necessarily to improve procreation, nor is it natural or random. It is deliberately controlled by us. To date genetic engineering has been limited in all countries to modifying human genes only in individual patients in a manner that is not passed on to their progeny. That is, genetically altering somatic cells rather than germline cells. An in vitro fertilization procedure called pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), (which is not genetic engineering), may ultimately lead to a change in attitudes about germline genetic engineering. It is hypothesized here that AI will assist in overcoming the risks of all genetic engineering and that germline genetic engineering is inevitable
From nouveau to universalis
Every new and extremely powerful technological advance comes with the potential for amazingly good as well as nightmarishly bad results. Atomic power, satellites, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, Brain-computer interfaces are no different. It only takes supremely smart people to make these great things, but it takes good and ethical smart people to monitor them and make sure the human race is not threatened by such inventions.
Our species is now on the cusp of evolving from homo sapiens, focused on our ethnocentric and national interests, to homo universalis, bringing about a world-centric civilization, capable of making our home planet flourish and bringing our solar system to life, perhaps, one day.