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How medical technology will transform human life - Siddhartha Mukherjee
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer and Siddhartha Mukherjee explore the many ways medical technology will transform our lives and help humans surpass physical and mental limitations. Mukherjee, a cancer physician and biologist, believes artificial intelligence will help create whole categories of new medicines. AI can spit out molecules with properties we didn’t even know existed, which has tantalizing implications for diseases currently thought to be incurable. Recently discovered treatments for things like spinal muscular dystrophy, which used to be almost certainly deadly but is now being treated with gene therapy, are just the beginning of what could be possible using tools like CRISPR gene editing or bionic prosthetics.
Mukherjee envisions a future where people who are paralyzed by disease or stroke can walk again, where people with speech impairments can talk to their loved ones, and where prosthetics become much more effective and integrated into our bodies. And beyond curing ailments, biotechnology can help improve the lives of healthy people, optimizing things like brain power and energy.
“We will become smarter, we will become hopefully more disease resistant, we will have larger memory banks,” Mukherjee explains, “And we will have the capacity to interact in the virtual sphere in a way we cannot just simply interact in the real sphere.”
Watch the full interview: From CRISPR to cloning: The science of new humans
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
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Siddhartha Mukherjee: CRISPR, AI, and cloning could transform the human race
Technologies like CRISPR gene editing, synthetic biology, bionics integrated with AI, and cloning will create "new humans," says Dr. Siddhartha Mukherjee.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer sits down with the cancer physician and biologist to discuss some of the recent groundbreaking developments in medical technology that are helping to improve the human condition. Mukherjee points to four tools that have sped up our understanding of how the human body works: gene editing with CRISPR, AI-powered prosthetics, cloning, and synthetic biology. Gene editing with CRISPR allows humans to make precise alterations in the genome and synthetic biology means you can create a genome similar to writing a computer code.
“That technology is groundbreaking, and it really shook our worlds because I hadn’t expected it,” Mukherjee says.
Mukherjee also talks about bionic prosthetics that help us extend our hands, brains, and other body parts with artificial intelligence. AI learning algorithms mean that prosthetics like neural implants can work more efficiently, adapting to each body's specific environment and making them more effective. The last tool Mukherjee highlights is cloning, a technology that’s been around for decades but has recently become much faster and easier. Right now, these four technologies are sitting in different silos. In the near future, however, some combination of these tools will be applied to real individuals, which will profoundly impact the medical landscape of biological science and lead to what Mukherjee calls “the new human.”
Watch the full interview: From CRISPR to cloning: The science of new humans
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
From CRISPR to cloning: The science of new humans
The benefits and risks of human enhancement using CRISPR, AI, and synthetic biology.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer sits down with physician and biologist Siddhartha Mukherjee to explore the recent advances, benefits, and risks of human enhancement with technology. Mukherjee’s latest book, “The Song of the Cell,” explores the history and medical science behind “the new humans,” a term he uses to describe people who have been altered in some way, initially for medical purposes and, potentially in the future, for enhancement. Bremmer and Mukherjee discuss the transformative impact of new tools like CRISPR gene-editing, AI-powered prosthetics, and brain implants that can help treat everything from movement disorders to depression.
“The idea of the human is changing,” Mukherjee says, "CRISPR, synthetic biology, prosthetic biology with AI, and cloning of individuals—that’s what I mean by the new human.”
These new medical technologies could radically improve our understanding of health and the human body, leading to a future of new medicines, cures for fatal diseases, expanded cognitive capabilities, and even communication with deceased loved ones. But there are also ethical implications to tinkering with human nature, including eugenics as a result of gene editing, the potential for AI to create toxic molecules, and the danger of real-time experimentation on the ecosystem with CRISPR. How do we balance the life-changing potential of biotech tools without changing the very nature of what it means to be human?
Watch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on US public television (check local listings) and at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld.
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Podcast: Tracking the rapid rise of human-enhancing biotech with Siddhartha Mukherjee
Listen: In the past decade, we’ve seen an explosion in medical and biotechnologies like gene editing with CRISPR, synthetic organs, cloning, and AI-powered prosthetics that are helping to eradicate disease, improve the human condition, and enhance our brain power. These developments have radically transformed our understanding of the human body and what we thought was possible. But like most new tech, there’s also potential for misuse, privacy concerns, and ethical implications. Gene editing can cure debilitating diseases but also lead to designer babies. AI learning algorithms can power neural implants but also potentially create new chemical weapons.
Ian Bremmer delves into that tension on the GZERO World Podcast with Siddhartha Mukherjee, a physician and biologist whose new book, “The Song of the Cell,” explores the science, history, and technology behind what he calls “the new humans.”
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.- Podcast: Why Scott Galloway is “cautiously optimistic” about AI - but not TikTok or Meta ›
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Ian Explains: Will biotech breakthroughs lead to super humans?
Medical technology could lead to a new breed of super humans.
On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer looks at the evolution of human enhancement, tracing its roots from ancient history to recent ground-breaking tools like CRISPR gene editing, AI-powered prosthetics, and brain implants. These advances hint at a future of disease eradication, independence from physical disability, and recovery from traumatic brain injury. In a few short years, they’ve radically expanded the possibilities of how technology can improve the human experience and extend our lives.
But while biotechnology has incredible, transformative potential, it also brings lots of risks. Gene editing raises the specter of designer babies, eugenics, and even the potential for militaries to create superhuman soldiers. There’s also the question of privacy and data collection, as private companies like Elon Musk’s Neuralink gain further access to our medical histories. Ultimately, we need to strike a balance between embracing biotechnology’s life-changing potential while safeguarding our values, ethics and the very idea of what it means to be human.
Watch the upcoming episode of GZERO World with Ian Bremmer on US public television this weekend (check local listings) and at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld.
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Destroyed train carriages are seen at the site of a crash, where two trains collided, near the city of Larissa, Greece, March 1, 2023.
Hard Numbers: Greek train crash, US attaches strings to chip cash, Serbia and Kosovo outline peace, camel copies for sale
43: At least 43 people are dead after a passenger train carrying people from Athens, Greece, to the northern city of Thessaloniki collided head-on with a freight train. A provincial stationmaster has already been arrested as part of the initial investigation. Greek rail unions have long complained about staffing shortfalls and outdated equipment.
10: Cash for chips now comes with strings attached. The US government has ruled that any American companies that receive money from a new multibillion-dollar fund to support the semiconductor industry must agree not to expand in China for 10 years. For more on the Great Global Chips War, see here.
15: A mere 15 years after Kosovo’s controversial declaration of independence from Serbia, the two countries reached a(nother) tentative, EU-brokered framework for peace earlier this week. Much remains to be worked out, but it’s a good sign nonetheless. See here for our recent explainer on why it’s so hard for Kosovo and Serbia to normalize relations.
50,000: Do you have A) $50,000 burning a hole in your pocket and B) a stunningly beautiful camel at your disposal? If so, please consider spending (A) on making a perfect clone of (B), courtesy of a Dubai lab that specializes in camel copies. Get over the hump — do it!
CRISPR and the gene-editing revolution
CRISPR stands for Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats. You don't have to remember that, but you should know that this new gene editing technique can literally change life as we know it. Through CRISPR, scientists are now able to precisely edit DNA sequences in living things. They hope to be able to cure genetic diseases like sickle cell anemia and hereditary blindness. CRISPR may even be used to treat cancer and HIV. There's a darker side to CRISPR. What about engineering soldiers who can fight without fear or pain? Many argue that using CRISPR technology—for good or bad—amounts to playing God and that its use should be halted altogether. Others, like the World Health Organization, see enormous potential for the science but want to put limits on its application to prevent humanity from bringing out our own worst traits. Ian Bremmer explains what we know and don't know about the brave new world of gene editing.
Watch the episode: CRISPR gene editing and the human race
CRISPR gene editing and the human race
Berkeley scientist Jennifer Doudna won the 2020 Nobel Prize for her work on the revolutionary gene-editing technology known as CRISPR. It has the potential to cure genetic diseases like sickle cell anemia and hereditary blindness and may even be used to treat cancer and HIV. But when it comes to editing humanity, where do we draw the line? How do we avoid falling into the same kind of dystopian nightmare outlined in Blade Runner? Doudna discussed the risks and benefits of CRISPR in an interview with Ian Bremmer on GZERO World. Also in this episode: a look at cloning our pets (speaking of going too far…).
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