Digital Babylon and AI Genetics

Digital Babylon refers to the sudden and rapid ascent of immensely powerful technology and media companies (an event), the cultural, political, and spiritual forces those companies and their tools/services exert on us individually and collectively (an empire), and the period of time where individuals, families, and churches must live as wise and faithful exiles amid God-ordained cultural and spiritual opposition (an epoch)1.

This past Thursday, on The Reconnect with Carmen LaBerge, we discussed “The AI Genetics Revolution is Coming” from The New Atlantis. I want to analyze this situation described by this essay through the three categories of event, empire, and epoch to see how Scripture can help us make sense of this development in AI–a development with significant long-term consequences.

As Bill Drexel explains, while everyone is distracted about questions about AI superintelligence and the antics of celebrity CEOs, true breakthroughs in AI are quietly happening in genetics. What LLMs like ChatGPT and Claude have done to language can be easily applied to the language of life–a language that, up until now, has remained mostly undeciphered. Says Drexel:

[AI] is likely to be to genetics what calculus was to physics, providing the tools necessary to harness the full power of biology and making earlier efforts appear primitive by comparison. The large language models that power chatbots like Claude and ChatGPT demonstrate how machine learning techniques can crack entire human languages with great sophistication and minimal oversight. That tremendous feat, in principle, is transferable to cracking the language of genomics in ways that were previously inconceivable. Related techniques have already been used to decipher lost human languages that had long stumped linguists. And AI excels in exactly the sort of ultra-complex, multivariable pattern recognition needed to disentangle the meaning of genetic sequences — which are a non-human language whose combinatorial complexity would have remained impenetrable using conventional methods.

The applications of this breakthrough are diverse. Existing technologies such as CRISPR, the scissor-like process of modifying genetic code to remove abnormalities, are getting a tremendous boost in capability, while other institutions are deploying it to advance new methods in reproductive technologies, such as in vitro gametogenesis (or IVG). IVG, in contrast to in vitro fertilization, “can create egg and sperm cells from, say, skin cells or other ordinary cells in the body. Already successfully used to create healthy offspring in mice, there is the obvious prospect that IVG could allow prospective parents to create industrial quantities of viable embryos, nullifying the difficulty that has characterized harvesting human egg cells. On top of this, AI’s increasing illumination of genetic information could dramatically improve the power of genetic screening.”

But as with any major event in Digital Babylon, there are usually ripple effects that trigger other events. While Drexel is concerned about what the kind of technological development may lead to (for both good and ill), Drexel’s larger concern is China’s involvement in pushing the boundaries of this technology far beyond what America and the West may be comfortable with. Thus, there are two events here: the use of AI to rapidly advance the field of genetics in new directions, and China’s deliberate use of this development as part of its AI arms race with America.

The Digital Babylon framework is mostly concerned with powerful economic empires. But economic empires like Meta, Google, Amazon, and Bytedance do not exist in a vacuum. Every major Big Tech empire is connected to a particular nation and is influenced by that nation’s laws and cultural priorities. Normally that relationship is self-contained, especially when it comes to American companies. But in this case, not only do we have competing economic empires, those economic empires are outposts in an even grander conflict between two global superpowers.

China’s human rights abuses, as long and easily documented as the rising of the sun each day, provide an avenue for genetic experimentation in the way that America would never consider. While the FDA has already approved some measure of gene therapy for severe and existing conditions, such as sickle-cell disease, ethical debates and regulatory red tape go hand-in-hand in slowing down both the speed and direction of American innovation in this area. China, on the other hand, does not care about any of that:

China has long taken advantage of this openness while also aggressively seeking access to international genomic data through illegal channels, and while compiling data on its own citizens, particularly its Uyghur minority, and on millions of women around the world via Chinese-built prenatal tests. . . . The Chinese government is actively supporting an expansion in biological experimentation on primates, while similar experiments in Western countries are declining due to animal rights concerns. For example, one Chinese lab in 2019 inserted a human gene related to brain development into the genomes of several macaque monkeys. Of the eleven monkeys, six were euthanized, aborted, or otherwise died; the researchers found the others to exhibit increased cognitive performance. Western observers were scandalized at what one anthropologist called “an ethical nightmare,” while the Chinese lab claimed its experiment “values the use of non-human primates in understanding unique human traits.”

The differences in approaches is underscored further by the economic empires at the forefront of this innovation. In America, the emphasis is largely on genetic screening for mutations and character traits (at least for now). The same technology being used to combat cancer is the same technology that could potentially spare future children lives of disability or disease. Chinese companies are also pursuing this, but instead of being driven by the individualistic emphasis of the American family, China’s goal is something different: “population quality”. Look no further than the actions of the president and co-founder of China’s largest genomic company:

According to a publication of the state media company Shanghai United Media Group, the president and cofounder of BGI forbids his employees from having children with birth defects, which he says would be a “disgrace” to the company. Not one of the 1,400 children born to employees has had serious congenital diseases, he says.

While it may take several generations to bear fruit, all of the guardrails necessary to hold China back from experimenting with the creation of genetically enhanced humans at scale. For China, the relationship between emerging AI genetics and fulfilling its nationalistic aims is a straightforward one. Economic success is not enough; true victory comes in transforming the Chinese population in ways America and the West would find horrifying.

As with many of the events and empires that make up life in Digital Babylon, the question of “how then shall we live” involves accepting a hard truth: individually, there is little anyone can do to stop the domino chain of consequences from continuing their course. While we do not need to adopt a dispassionate stoicism towards these developments, we need to recognize that for the average individual, life in Digital Babylon will force us to reckon with developments beyond our control.

Prayer, of course, is the most important thing any one individual could participate in. Like other circumstances in Digital Babylon, the impacts are not equally distributed. Some people will feel the impact of the AI genetics revolution more than others, and it should be made clear that some of those impacts may be positive. We can and should gladly welcome new medical breakthroughs that allow for treatment of genetic conditions previously thought impossible to deal with even as we sharply denounce the use of this same technology to rebuild humanity for nationalistic purposes. Prayer is the nexus of thankfulness for God’s providential gifts in new treatment possibilities and intercessions for rulers and leaders to be steered away from the temptation to play god like never before.

Pastors and parents need to begin discipling their congregations and children on the fundamentals of what it means to be made human, including the goodness of God’s design in our limitations. Genetic engineering cannot undo the curse of sin. Whatever tinkering China or other nations may do to future humans, every human is born under the curse of sin and doomed to physically die. But humanity is not some unoptimized jumbled mess waiting for scientists to optimize our features for maximal strength, knowledge, or health; the fact that humans have limitations is not part of the curse, and those limitations are not a threat to the goodness of God. Strong preaching and teaching about the goodness of humanity, and the goodness of humanity under the stewardship of God as our Creator and Sustainer, is important to counter the inevitable pressure to go beyond merely healing disease towards augmentations that serve the ends of corporations, markets, or nations.

In the Old Testament, specifically 1-2 Kings, the people of God are regularly besieged by their enemies. Sometimes these events are temporary, but other times, these empires leave lasting impacts. Assyria’s destruction of the nation of Israel was an event that brought one empire to an end and created a new epoch for Judah. Though Assyria later fell to Babylon, the scepter of Babylon soon fell over Judah as the Lord disciplined Judah for the same idolatry for which he disciplined Israel–only instead of full destruction, the Lord allowed his people the mercy of exile in Babylon. Israel’s destruction was permanent. Judah’s was not. The Lord was clear Judah would one day return to the land, even though things would never be the same.

Whatever empires may emerge as a result of this growing new sector of genetic health, one thing is undeniably true: this is a monumental event with permanent, epoch-inducing consequences. Some events in Digital Babylon are more significant than others. Some empires in Digital Babylon may seem influential for a season but, like Assyria, are doomed to give way to something even more dangerous. But in the face of the possibility of generations of genetically modified humans–for any reason, good or ill–it is impossible to overstate the magnitude of Digital Babylon’s influence in creating a future once thought to be science fiction, and to do so within our lifetime. And just as the walls of Jerusalem were eventually destroyed by Babylon, the walls of tinkering with the fundamentals of life itself are besieged by Digital Babylon.

Only the Lord knows what awaits us in this area, but what was true of Judah’s exile into Babylon is the same of ours as well: no kingdom of man or machine can stand against the Lord, and no counsel of technological-economic conglomerates can thwart his eternal plan to reconcile all things to himself through Jesus Christ. If the Lord should purpose that we live to see the worst horrors of AI-driven genetic engineering come to pass, it is not because of his slack oversight or carelessness. In the face of such a future, we ought to renew our confidence in the power of God and the goodness of his purposes and plans. The Gospel of Christ will continue to go forth as the kingdom of God advances into the world regardless of Digital Babylon’s attempts to stop it, and Christ will return to judge the living and the dead. If our hope is in stopping these worst-case scenarios from materializing, we are betting on disappointment, but if our hope is based on Christ, Christians and the Church can courageous endure whatever comes next.

This is a follow-up to my appearance on The Reconnect with Carmen LaBerge on Thursday, November 6. My bi-weekly segment is live every other Thursday (next one is Nov 20) at 6:08AM CST wherever MyFaithRadio is carried, online, or in the podcast version released later in the day.

For my next newsletter, I am aiming to provide some pastoral and parental guidance on the single most horrifying thing I’ve ever read about the internet: the Harper’s Magazine essay on gooning. I don’t even know how I will do it, but it needs to be done. Christians need thinkers and researchers on Internet culture, especially when it comes to the formation of our boys and men.

Together, we are passing through Digital Babylon.

Austin