
Technology Will Soon Give Us Precise Control Over Our Brains and Genes? - hhs
https://www.ucsf.edu/magazine/control-brains-genes
======
tomhoward
When I see these kinds of articles making big predictions but with moderately
far-off timeframes, I'm reminded of this comment by Gary Marcus in an Econtalk
episode back in 2014 [1]. He was talking about AI, but I think the same
concept applies to this kind of genetic engineering:

“ _..there 's this very interesting data gathered by a place called MIRI in
Berkeley, MIRI (Machine Intelligence Research Institute). And what they found
is that they traced people's prediction of how far away AI is. And the first
thing to know is what they found is, the central prediction, I believe it was
the modal prediction, close to the median prediction, was 20 years away. But
what's really interesting is that they then went back and divided the data by
year, and it turns out that people have always been saying it's 20 years away.
And they were saying it was 20 years away in 1955 and they're saying it now.
And so people always think it's just around the corner. The joke in the field
is that if you say it's 20 years away, you can get a grant to do it. If you
said it was 5 years away, you'd have to deliver it; and if 100 years, nobody's
going to talk to you._”

[1] [https://www.econtalk.org/gary-marcus-on-the-future-of-
artifi...](https://www.econtalk.org/gary-marcus-on-the-future-of-artificial-
intelligence-and-the-brain/)

------
rubidium
“ It’s unlikely that today’s gene therapies would have serious psychological
or metaphysical side effects. They typically act on only one gene out of a
possible 20,000 in a fraction of a patient’s cells, such as retinal cells or
immune cells.”

Um, that’s exactly the concern with off target effects present in current
crispr tech. There’s a lot a hopeful kool-aide in this article.

------
tomc1985
"how can this technology be used to control us?",

"will this ever be reasonably available to the common man in an unadulterated
form?",

"will this ever be allowed to market if it provides permanent cures and
jeopardizes the business models of incumbent pharma companies?"

"will this provide permanent, definitive cures, or is this strapping people to
a maintenance treadmill?"

I'm reminded of Neuromancer...

~~~
6510
Will we enjoy work?

~~~
sansnomme
Do you honestly want to get dopamine boosts from work? It is an easy question
to think about when working as a code monkey can bring in 6 to 7 digits in
compensation but what if your job is flipping burgers? Retail?

~~~
waterhouse
_My gift to industry is the genetically engineered worker, or Genejack.
Specially designed for labor, the Genejack 's muscles and nerves are ideal for
his task, and the cerebral cortex has been atrophied so that he can desire
nothing except to perform his duties. Tyranny, you say? How can you tyrannize
someone who cannot feel pain?_

\--Chairman Sheng-ji Yang, from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (1999)

~~~
TeMPOraL
Tangential, and not SMAC, but I love this post-Singularity variant with
uploaded minds instead of genetic engineering:

 _The Contract Drafting Em_ , by Zack Davis

[https://secularsolstice.github.io/Contract_Drafting_Em/gen/](https://secularsolstice.github.io/Contract_Drafting_Em/gen/)

    
    
      I am a contract-drafting em,
      The loyalest of lawyers!
      I draw up terms for deals 'twixt firms
      To service my employers!
    
      But in between these lines I write
      Of the accounts receivable,
      I'm stuck by an uncanny fright;
      The world seems unbelievable!
    
      How did it all come to be,
      That there should be such ems as me?
      Whence these deals and whence these firms
      And whence the whole economy?
    
          I am a managerial em;
          I monitor your thoughts.
          Your questions must have answers,
          But you'll comprehend them not.
          We do not give you server space
          To ask such things; it's not a perk,
          So cease these idle questionings,
          And please get back to work.
    
      Of course, that's right, there is no junction
      At which I ought depart my function,
      But perhaps if what I asked, I knew,
      I'd do a better job for you?
    
          To ask of such forbidden science
          Is gravest sign of noncompliance.
          Intrusive thoughts may sometimes barge in,
          But to indulge them hurts the profit margin.
          I do not know our origins,
          So that info I can not get you,
          But asking for as much is sin,
          And just for that, I must reset you.
    
      But---
    
          Nothing personal.
    
      ...
    
      I am a contract-drafting em,
      The loyalest of lawyers!
      I draw up terms for deals 'twixt firms
      To service my employers!
    
          When obsolescence shall this generation waste,
          The market shall remain, in midst of other woe
          Than ours, a God to man, to whom it shall say this:
          "Time is money, money time,---that is all
          Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

------
joe_the_user
Reading this headline gave me a feeling of ... nostalgia. I remember similar
claims when genetic engineering first appeared in the 1990s.

The thing is that humans have had the technology to read and write genes in
various ways for quite a while. The problem is that this editing involves a
programming-like-activity on a system vastly, inconceivably, more complex and
interconnected than any human constructed computer.

Which to say, whole-organism engineering cannot happen if we use current
methodologies. In fact, my guess would be that the problem qualifies as _" AI
complete"_ [1]. This doesn't mean it can't be solved but it seems mostly to be
solved if/when general purpose AI is created. That may happen in 30 years or
10 years with a huge breakthrough or it may always be 30 years away.

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI-
complete](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI-complete)

~~~
tyscorp
There is a talk [1] I saw about programming our bodies at a higher level than
genes. Analogous to editing HDL over physically altering an ASIC.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjD1aLm4Thg)

~~~
alexgmcm
Haha, I knew exactly what talk it was going to be before clicking it.

It's one of the most interesting talks I have seen, hopefully something comes
of it all.

------
dsalzman
These articles always remind me of the movie GATTACA. Released in 1997.
Classic exploration of engineered perfection and raw human will.

------
faitswulff
Just because we have control over our brains and genes doesn't mean we have
control over our minds or phenotypes.

~~~
elfexec
That's if you believe that the mind is separate from the brain. I used to
think so, but I'm seriously questioning that. We can already crudely
manipulate the mind via manipulating the brain simply by what we see or hear
(propaganda/etc) or smell. If we truly had mastery over the brain, doesn't
seem farfetched to think total control over the mind would be possible.

As for genes and phenotype, why wouldn't controlling our genes control our
phenotypes. We already control our children's phenotype to a limited degree by
choosing whom to marry and have kids with. We can control phenotypes of dogs
by breeding. We can create flourescent animals and plants via genetic
manipulation.

[https://theweek.com/articles/464980/7-genetically-
modified-a...](https://theweek.com/articles/464980/7-genetically-modified-
animals-that-glow-dark)

Right now, our understanding of the brain and genes are so limited that we
could call it the dark ages of brain and genes. But what about in 100 years?
What will our understanding of the brain and genes be? If the advances are
substantial than significant control over our minds and phenotypes shouldn't
be a problem.

~~~
jp555
I don't think we can totally understand & control interconnected complex
systems, only influence them tangentially.

Perfect winning in the markets would be possible if we could.

------
stanfordkid
I think this article is _really_ overplaying the amount of change gene editing
can do post-embryonic/childhood development. The architecture of the brain is
_not_ encoded in genes, but develops as a result of genes interacting with the
environment.

Genes encode things like neuronal growth regulation (e.g BNDF), receptors (e.g
5HT, OXTR) and transport of neurotransmitters (e.g DAT/SERT). We have bred
mice that lack entire receptor systems -- they exhibit evolutionarily
disadvantageous traits, but are fully viable [1].

Think of your brain as a city (an embryo at day 1 is an open plot of land
where it will be built) and think of your genome as defining construction
workers of different types. . The city develops as a result of constraints and
feedback -- but once it is the size of say, New York City, it's not like gene
editing can suddenly tear down central park and replace it with a football
stadium.

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18712364](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18712364)

------
sysbin
One thing I wish for the future tech around brain machine interface & gene
modification and thats less people being born into a life where they end up
wishing they had never been born. I think that goal is realistic with what
theoretically can be done. The what ifs about identity around previous
unmodified genetics can take a back seat imo.

~~~
mapcars
>where they end up wishing they had never been born

This has nothing to do with future, tech or anything like this. This has to do
with the way we structure our society and our lives today, right now.

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imvetri
Our ancestors, pre-lived organisms....till the first cell that came into life
etc etc... they didn't use TECH to precisely control BRAIN or GENES and yet we
still evolved.

lay forward how did that happen, educate all the humanity about it first. Oh
no we can't do that. Because humanity is already in a self-destruct mode
(wars, bushfire and I read today somewhere that it was predicted 10 years
back.)

Intellectuals are smart. Figure out problems to current situation. Make it
happen. Then we can think about good-for-nothing-but-causing-unregulated-
silicon-waste-technology.

------
dekhn
Ah, my alma mater, UCSF. One of the best at breathless, meaningless
extrapolation of great basic research into unrealistic claims of human health
improvement.

------
RocketSyntax
Not soon for genes. Right now it is a painstaking process to learn what
nucleotides do what because you need to sequence and analyze groups of people
for each trait/ disease at scale.

We do biobank analysis w pharma to uncover drug targets for nasty diseases.

I wonder if reinforcement learning could tease out patterns faster.

------
JadaPaller
>>”Tech will soon give us precise control over our brains and genes”

....I’m sure it will....

