A curious feature of the last few years of anxieties about AI has been how they favor some dystopian fears over others. Right now, because of ChatGPT’s disarmingly natural conversation skills, we see the domination of worries about AIs becoming new, alien minds. Will AI models become conscious? Will we lose control of them? Will they outcompete humanity in the struggle for existence? But these fears remain abstract and indistinct.
Meanwhile, a more concrete dystopian future is coming into focus, although it does not receive nearly as much attention: widespread genetic engineering. It is quite possible that the most immediate threat AI poses to humanity is not that its superhuman intelligence will beat us in the game of natural selection, but that it will unleash the power of artificial selection to the advantage of some people over others.
AI systems’ mastery of language may or may not portend a future of superintelligent AI minds, but it already provides a proof of concept for a revolution in gene editing. And though such a revolution promises to unlock transformative medical advancements, it also brings longstanding bioethical dilemmas to the fore: Should people of means be able to hardwire physical or cognitive advantages into their genomes, or their children’s? Where is the line between medical therapy and dehumanizing enhancements?
Just as AI precipitates these morally fraught capabilities, the geopolitical race for AI dominance is upending the historic monopoly that Western nations have had in shaping international bioethical norms. China’s remarkable progress in AI, along with its demonstrated willingness to experiment with genetically enhancing its population, raise the possibility that a totalitarian state with profoundly different ethical standards from our own will have at least equal say in determining the future of genetic engineering.
The window of opportunity for the United States to avert the worst outcomes — and to prevent China from wielding decisive influence over the trajectory of AI in biotechnology — is closing.
Since 1953, when James Watson and Francis Crick discovered life’s genetic code along the spirals of a double helix, the dream of biological engineering has seemed tantalizingly close at hand: If we know how life’s information is stored and structured, perhaps we can rewrite it according to our own designs. But whether you see this prospect as a panacea or a new Pandora’s box, progress toward it has been slow, owing largely to the fact that genetic information is overwhelmingly vast, disorderly, and unwieldy.
Scientists have identified some particular genes that determine or influence particular conditions. But that’s a far cry from understanding genomics writ large, as genetic features are more often the result of constellations of genes working together. In a very real sense, genes are a language — a system to record and transmit information — but one that humans are simply ill-suited to speak. Watson and Crick may have discovered life’s alphabet, and subsequent geneticists may have deciphered the meaning of a variety of words, but a lexicon and grammar have yet to be uncovered.
Enter AI. It 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.
At the time of writing, the most wide-ranging and ambitious project using AI to decipher the language of genetics is the Evo 2 system released by the Arc Institute, Nvidia, and others in February. As a report by Stanford University notes, the system is trained on the genetic information of “all known living species — and a few extinct ones,” comprising a dataset of almost 9 trillion nucleotides, in hopes of parsing the function of DNA in every domain of life. It has already shown promise in predicting which among an individual’s many genetic mutations are most likely to contribute to diseases like cancer, in identifying new relationships between multiple scattered genes, and in writing novel genetic code.
Other examples of AI successfully enabling gene literacy are also cropping up. Chinese researchers have built an AI model that can create 3D images of human faces based only on DNA traces, which the researchers believe will be useful for finding missing children even years after they disappeared, or for criminal investigations. Yale, M.I.T., and Harvard have collaborated in using AI to author synthetic DNA sequences that are able to switch genes on or off according to particular circumstances, a major boon for the specificity possible in gene therapy.
AI techniques are not only reading and writing genomic data: they are also creating the tools needed to make more effective CRISPR gene editors, the leading method to manipulate genetic material. Until recently, CRISPR-based gene editors had largely been derived from existing, naturally-occurring microbes and adapted for use in cells of other organisms, including humans. Even while this method was hailed as a breakthrough in the granularity with which scientists could edit genetic material, it has still been plagued by imprecision and “off-target effects” — that is, unintended genetic edits. By feeding massive amounts of protein data into large language models, biologists are beginning to be able to create bespoke CRISPR gene-editing proteins from scratch that are precisely designed for specialized purposes. This method is both more effective at locating and splicing specific genes with fewer misfires, and has a long runway ahead for continued improvements.
To be clear, there are still considerable hurdles. There remains a tremendous amount of mystery in genetics. And the biological complexity that modulates how genes function is formidable.
Even so, the trajectory is clear. As commentators clamor over whether superintelligence looms, AI is quietly bringing about a much more certain future: one in which humanity is able to “speak” — and write — genes with fluency.
For the vast majority of geneticists, these developments are exciting for all the right reasons. They represent a potential quantum leap in our ability to understand and address the genetic underpinnings of diseases that have long evaded conventional treatments. This is not to mention the prospects for more resilient crops, enhanced biomanufacturing, and personalized medicine.
But it is also difficult to overstate how morally fraught these capabilities may prove. Designer babies is the use case that typically comes to mind, but it is unlikely to be the first case to consider in a world in which precision gene-editing would still be delicate and expensive. A more likely eugenic path would be through in vitro gametogenesis (IVG), a rapidly advancing technique that 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.
Put the two together — a vastly larger pool of embryos to pick and choose from, and much better tools for predicting their traits from their genes — and you have eugenics by other means. That is: designer babies by overproduction and precision selection.
Similarly, somatic gene therapy, through which specific cells or groups of cells in the body are targeted for alteration, represents a less risky and more cost-effective method of gene editing than altering the first cells of embryos, which introduces heritable changes to the DNA in every tissue and organ of the developed body. Assuming a world in which AI dramatically expands our ability to understand and alter genes, physicians treating patients with, for example, inherited metabolic disorders would be more likely to want to modify the cells of adults than to pursue germline modifications in embryos that would affect future generations but not help individuals already experiencing the impacts of the disorders. Doing so would likely be safer and simpler, too: changing genes in fully developed adults — or at least in more-developed adolescents — would reduce the potential complications that might be introduced if some of the genes in question might also influence the developmental process in unexpected ways.
The FDA has already approved a range of somatic gene therapies for conditions such as sickle cell disease, and there are conceivably a large number of such relatively uncontroversial therapies yet to be developed, likely with the help of AI. But a growing range of capabilities and expertise in gene therapy also raises ethical questions: Where will this use of genetic engineering stop? Will enhancement beyond medical purposes, for example to improve cognition or athletic performance, be on the table? Which blurry gradations between medical and enhancement purposes will be permitted? The answers to these questions will determine the extent to which humanity will redirect the processes that have defined the biological boundaries of our species; they will also determine whether we hardwire genetic inequalities into populations.
Some parents have already begun answering these questions for their children. Consider Orchid Health, which offers to sequence the whole genome of IVF embryos to screen not only for single-gene mutations, but also for combinations of gene variants that may predispose individuals to neurodevelopmental disorders, psychiatric conditions, and obesity. Another company, Heliospect Genomics, has offered to screen embryos for intelligence. In principle, AI should be able to help make such screening ambitions more thorough and precise in the near term as it rapidly illuminates more and more of the human genome.
But the ways that AI is accelerating in vitro gametogenesis, gene therapies, and embryo selection are not the only challenges that it is thrusting upon bioethics.
American bioethicists are accustomed to monitoring biotech progress with the assumption that whatever becomes feasible will likely do so first in the United States. Or at least, it will happen among scientists who have been acculturated by Western institutions and their form of bioethics. That is unlikely to be the case with the budding AI-biotech revolution: indications are that China has the capability and willingness to turn Western bioethics on its head.
China’s stated goals are to edge out the United States in AI by 2030 and in biotech by 2035. Whether or not it will succeed remains to be seen, but it is safe to say China will be a fierce contender, especially in genetics.
On the AI side, China is rapidly closing the gap in large language model capabilities, as the explosive launch of DeepSeek’s R1 model in January showed. Remarkably, the engineers on the team that built the product were trained almost entirely in China, highlighting the extent to which the country’s indigenous AI ecosystem has become competitive with that of the United States. Moreover, whereas American AI policy has become increasingly fixated on racing toward superintelligence, Beijing is instead more focused on developing AI for specific applied purposes, including genomic research. American export controls on advanced chips to China are designed to curtail China’s prospects for developing highly compute-intensive, superintelligent systems, but they do little to restrain its ability to develop genomic AI.
Zoom in on genomic data — the lifeblood of next-generation biotechnology — and the picture looks even more alarming. Western countries’ privacy laws and scientific ethos have meant that building large databases of human genomic data is difficult but, where achieved, tends to be made openly available for researchers internationally. 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. Motivated by a more acute sense of food insecurity than the United States, China is also already a leader in agricultural genomics — expertise that is likely transferable to a broader literacy in genomics.
To American geneticists who doubt the quality of Chinese research on the cutting edge of biotech, it may feel implausible that China will surpass the United States in these areas. But biotech would not be the first sector to realize how China’s seemingly lagging expertise can suddenly surpass U.S. leadership, as has already happened with drones, solar panels, graphene, electric vehicles, and, increasingly, pharmaceuticals. Congress’s National Security Commission on Emerging Biotechnology has warned of China’s potential to eclipse the United States in this field, and China has already taken the lead in some cutting-edge areas, such as CAR T-cell therapy, a new approach to cancer treatments. In one key bottleneck to success — AI talent — China is competitive. In the other — genomic data — it has a clear advantage.
Then there is China’s willingness to pursue ethically contentious experiments that are stepping stones to more radical capabilities. 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.”
It is true that the Chinese government, in the face of international backlash, imprisoned Dr. He Jiankui for his 2018 experiment that brought the first birth of genetically edited humans, twin girls. But the People’s Daily — an official propaganda mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party — initially hailed the experiment as a “splendid triumph” and “a milestone accomplishment China has achieved.”
China’s willingness to engage in such experimentation is not just reflective of its higher risk tolerance compared to the West; it also points to the country’s chilling biotech ambitions. For many years, CCP leaders have been clear in calling for a renewed focus on the quality of Chinese children in the wake of what the Party considers the success of its one-child policy in controlling their quantity. The CCP’s 2021 five-year plan likewise noted the goal to “improve the quality of the birth population.” In the light of initiatives like China’s infamous — and later renamed — 1994 Eugenics and Health Protection Law, it takes little imagination to guess where all this is headed.
Still clearer are the indications from BGI, China’s leading genomic company, which claims to be one of the largest genomics organizations in the world and is buoyed by heavy state support. The company has run an initiative to discern the genetic basis for IQ. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if there were certain tweaks you could make in utero that would enhance the performance of our brain?” one of the project’s scientists told the New Yorker in 2014. A Reuters investigation in 2021 found that the company developed its prenatal test, used by millions of women worldwide, in collaboration with the Chinese army and used it in the service of improving the country’s “population quality.”
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. “In the United States and in the West, you have a certain way,” he told the New Yorker. “You feel you are advanced and you are the best. Blah, blah, blah. You follow all these rules and have all these protocols and laws and regulations. You need somebody to change it. To blow it up.”
If history is any guide, China will do just that. The world has become desensitized to the incredible scale of China’s flagrant human rights violations. Though exact numbers are unknown, the country’s system of forcibly — and sometimes fatally — removing and selling the organs of religious minorities and prisoners of conscience is among the largest and most grotesque violations of medical norms in the modern world. So too is the state’s use of forced abortions, sterilizations, and birth control on Uyghurs in the service of its genocide against the Muslim minority. And though the one-child policy was lifted in 2015, it was the largest reproductive social experiment in the history of humanity, involving untold numbers of brutal, state-administered forced abortions and sterilizations, and leading to an imbalance of 30 million more men than women in the country due to selective abortion of girls. And while these atrocities relied on relatively rudimentary technologies, China’s biotechnology ascent suggests that its next round of ethics violations are likely to be at the cutting edge of eugenics and genetic enhancement.
The novelty of emerging biotech capabilities landing first in the hands of Beijing will compound the complexities facing the West if it wants to guard against the temptation to use these technologies abusively. No doubt, if China finds itself with an unmitigated first-mover advantage in shaping the norms around new genetic capabilities, the impacts would be profound. It is an area with direct national security implications, given China’s interest in genetically enhanced soldiers and, perhaps, next-generation bioweapons.
Commercial entanglements, too, play a role: BGI’s sale of prenatal tests to European and other countries helps drive down their price, perhaps to a point that they could be made mandatory across China to improve “population quality” at scale. And the issue is poised to be a new flashpoint in America’s struggle with China over human rights — though the ethical norms around genetic alteration and reproductive selection are not yet well established even in the United States. Dr. He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist jailed for his creation of gene-edited babies, is now out of jail and plans to set up a lab in Austin, Texas.
The United States has options to try to influence the trajectory of these developments, perhaps through a preemptive biotech analogue to the “Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial Intelligence and Autonomy,” an initiative the State Department has launched to guide the progress of AI in warfare away from the worst outcomes. But any such effort would require rapidly achieving a new level of clarity on the bioethics issues at stake.
And so the challenge comes full circle: anyone hoping for a humane future for genomics must contend with the capabilities AI is unlocking, fast — or risk being routed by Beijing.
