I, Nanobot

Scientists are on the verge of breaking the carbon barrier -- creating artificial life and changing forever what it means to be human. And we're not ready.

By Alan H. Goldstein

Read more: Technology & Business

March 9, 2006 | Don't call me Ishmael, for I am not a survivor. Don't call me Cassandra either, since some might believe what I foretell. Perhaps I am the final manifestation of the singularity ignited in Olduvi Gorge a million and a half years ago. The flame that has grown to consume our planet and send sparks into outer space. The singularity that started as an ineffable, ineluctable pulse resonating through the neural matrix of Homo habilis. A voice that said, You whoever you are, You must sharpen that stone, pick up that bone, cross that line. A voice of supreme paradox; one that simultaneously makes us uniquely human, yet is itself not human. Nor is it the black extraterrestrial monolith of Stanley Kubrick's imagining. Rather, it was always here. Hard-wired into us at the atomic level -- and we into it. A voice whose physical manifestation, the tool, sang its song millions of years before human beings walked the earth. This voice prophesied and then enabled our coming. It will instruct us in our going. Or so I say, while understanding too well that in the 21st century we are all jaded and stultified with sensory overload. It's always the end of the world as we know it -- and we feel bored.

So why listen to the voice of one who is not Ishmael, not Cassandra, not even Ralph Nader? Because I can tell you something that no one else can. I can tell you the exact moment when Homo sapiens will cease to exist. And I can tell you how the end will come. I can show you the exact design of the device that will bring us down. I can reveal the blueprint, provide the precise technical specifications. Long before we can melt the polar ice caps, or denude the rain forests, or colonize the moon, we will be gone. And we will not -- definitely will not -- end with a bang or a whimper. The human race will go to its extinction in a state of supreme exaltation, like an actor climbing the stairs to accept an Academy Award. We will exit the stage of existence thinking we are going to a spectacular party.

The usual suspects -- those who have become known for predicting the evolution of humans and their technology -- just don't get it. Mainly because they don't understand what the definition of "it" is. They don't realize what evolution is. They have come to the problem from artificial intelligence, or systems analysis, or mathematics, or astronomy, or aerospace engineering. Folks like Ray Kurzweil, Bill Joy and Eric Drexler have raised some alarms, but they are too dazzled by the complexity and power of human cybersystems, devices and networks to see it coming. They think the power of our tools lies in their ever-increasing complexity -- but they are wrong. The biotech folks just don't get it either. People like Craig Venter and Leroy Hood are too enthralled with the possibilities inherent in engineering biology to get it. And our "bioethicists," like Arthur Kaplan, and those who cling to their human DNA like it was the Holy Grail or the original tablets of stone, blathering on like Captain Kirk about what special, sacred things we humans are -- they can't possibly get it. All these people who think (or fear) that technology will ultimately trump biology have missed the cosmic point. They are not even wrong. To begin to get it, one must dispense with artificial boundaries. If you are only thinking about cybersystems and DNA you cant possibly get it. And if you are thinking outside the box, you are still thinking too much like a human being.

Linus Pauling would have gotten it right away. Erwin Schrödinger too, and probably Robert Oppenheimer. Bertrand Russell got it. In fact he named it. What Ray, and Craig, and Eric, and Arthur can't see is the power of pure chemistry -- what Bertrand Russell called "chemical imperialism." What they don't get is this -- a system does not have to be complex to be transcendently, transformatively powerful. After all, we and everything we have created are nothing but the product of "carbon imperialism" -- carbon being the element that all known life is based on. Nothing but the power of pure chemistry. Living and nonliving materials, everything that exists in the physical world of our experience burns with that same electron fire. The fire of the chemical bond.

And Prometheus has returned. His new screen name is nanobiotechnology.

Quick. What's the difference between artificial life and synthetic biology? Don't know? Neither does anyone else, but that isn't stopping nanobiotechnology researchers from building them -- or it, or that, or whatever. To stay up to speed, there is always Artificial Life, the official journal of the International Society of Artificial Life. According to the editors, the humble mission of the journal "is [to investigate] the scientific, engineering, philosophical, and social issues involved in our rapidly increasing technological ability to synthesize life-like behaviors from scratch in computers, machines, molecules, and other alternative media." Whoa!

The federal government is in the game big-time as well. For example, the Physical Biosciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory tells us it has established the world's first Synthetic Biology Department, "to understand and design biological systems"

Some people might argue that it is pretty cavalier to work on "artificial life" or "synthetic biology" before we have even agreed on definitions for these "things." They might even point out that "artificial life" containing nonbiological components or new forms of biology could drastically alter the ecological balance or even the evolutionary trajectory of life on Earth. Of course the Lawrence Berkeley folks tell us we "need" synthetic biology for all kinds of excellent reasons. We need it for the efficient conversion of waste into energy and sunlight into hydrogen. We need it to create new life forms to use as "soft" biomaterials for tissue/organ growth. We need it to spawn new cells that will swim through the air or water to get to chemical and biological threats and decontaminate them. We need it, and we will build it, and it will be OK because we are the good guys (and gals). Our new life forms will only do good things.

In fact, we are very dangerously confused. To understand how confused, we must introduce the First Law of Nanobotics: The fusion of nanotechnology and biotechnology, now called nanobiotechnology, will result in the complete elimination of the barrier between living and nonliving materials. In other words, nanobiotechnology not only has the goal, it has the mandate to break through the "carbon barrier" of life. The result: We will produce not mere cyborgs, but true hybrid artificial life forms -- or manifestations of synthetic biology, take your pick. In a previous article on nanomedicine I described a few of the rudimentary "things" that will emerge from nanobiotechnology: molecular machines that contain parts from both the worlds of biology and human engineering. Single-walled carbon nanotubes linked to DNA. Gold nanoshells linked to antibody proteins.

But gold nanoshells linked to antibodies are just a simple prototype. The fact is, we have no idea what artificial life and/or synthetic biology is, much less what it could do, or how it will behave. A recent article in Science provides terrifying evidence of our hubris. Toward the end of this article, the author explains, "Ethical and environmental concerns must also be dealt with before synthetic biology fully matures as a field. MIT, the Venter Institute, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., have teamed up to examine issues such as how to keep any new life forms created under control ... One solution: Alter synthetic genetic codes such that they are incompatible with natural ones because there is a mismatch in the gene's coding for amino acids."

In other words, we will be protected because these organisms will have genomes never before seen on Earth! Perhaps, but that could also be a description of the ultimate biohazard. If the Ebola virus is considered a Biosafety Level 4 threat, what level would categorize a pathogenic organism made completely from synthetic genetic codes?

In order to understand the astonishing leap we are about to make, one needs to grasp that nanobiotechnology is more than just another tool. It is also a monumental experiment in molecular evolution over which we may ultimately have very little control. A nanobiotechnology device that is smart enough to circulate through the body hunting viruses or cancer cells is, by definition, smart enough to exchange information with that human body. This means, under the right conditions, the "device" could evolve beyond its original function. Cancer-hunting nanobots are often depicted as tiny robotic machines -- thus reassuringly impervious to fundamental changes brought on by merging with their biological environment. But they will not be tiny robots. That mechanical fantasy, promulgated by proponents of "Drexlerian" nanotechnology who appear devoid of even the most rudimentary knowledge of chemistry, has been decisively refuted by people who actually build the components for nanobiotechnology systems. People like the late Nobel Prize-winning chemist Richard E. Smalley and the great Harvard bioorganic chemist George Whitesides.

What will really go into our bodies, or out into the environment, will be hybrid molecular devices composed of both synthetic and biological components. These "devices" will have been fabricated to specifically exchange chemical information with biological or ecological systems. They will not be nanobots, they will be nanobiobots -- and those three letters make all the difference.

Next page: If the nanobiobot can modify us, there's no way to ensure that we can't modify the nanobiobot