Living beings accumulate and reproduce information. This principle is at the core of life and evolution.
But people have invented a new way to accumulate and reproduce information. We are talking about digital information, the volume of which is growing at an astonishing rate. The number of people who have access to the Internet and the number of devices connected to the Internet are also increasing due to the development of the Internet of Things.
Digital information can easily replicate itself, increasing the number of copies with each download or viewing; it can be modified (mutated) or combined in a different order to form a new array of information. She has a means of expressing herself - artificial intelligence. All this is characteristic of living beings. So maybe it's time for us to consider digital technology as an organism capable of evolution.
The cost of copying digital information is minimal and the generation rate is very high. Artificial intelligence can beat us at chess and game shows. Moreover, it is faster than us, smarter than us in some areas, and is used for activities that are too difficult for us.
Biologically, it sounds as if the digital world could defeat us in an interspecies struggle, as we show in a recent article in Trends in Ecology & Evolution.
Growth in the volume of information
The evolution of a new entity can lead to fundamental shifts in life on Earth. In fact, the main changes in the evolution of living things occurred due to changes in the transmission and storage of information.
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And the digital revolution has undoubtedly changed the way information is stored and transmitted.
Today, the amount of information stored on the Internet is approximately 1,024 bytes and is increasing by 30-40% every year, showing no signs of slowing down.
3.7 billion years after the emergence of life, information in living things (DNA) has reached the equivalent of about 1037 bytes. Digital information will reach this size in 100 years. It is just a moment from the point of view of evolution.
Winners and losers
Winners and losers were identified at the end of each evolutionary leap. And we should consider whether the digital leap is a threat to humanity.
Looking back will help with this
We know that each leap in earthly evolution led to a significant decrease in the position of the previous information carrier. RNA was originally a carrier of information. With the advent of DNA, the role of RNA has been reduced to transmitting messages from DNA to cell.
When complex cells appeared, they included simpler ones (bacteria). The latter began to serve as energy generators (mitochondria) and as solar cells (chloroplast) for a new type of cells.
The next leap marked the emergence of multicellular organisms. Most of the cells of these organisms could not transmit information to subsequent generations, and existed only to serve the few cells that could transmit.
The development of a nervous system that stores information from the environment has brought tremendous benefits to animals. The pinnacle of this development was human communities, transmitting information between generations through language and culture.
This allowed people to dominate the planet, so much so that it led to the beginning of a new geological era - the Anthropocene.
Extinction
So the lessons of evolutionary history are clear. Dramatic changes in the way information is replicated and stored have often resulted in the extinction of existing organisms, and these changes can also lead to parasitism or, at best, collaborative relationships.
Leading scientists, engineers and other figures from all over the world are already warning of the danger of autonomous military robots taking control of the world, which resembles horrific pictures from science fiction, as in the movie "The Terminator".
We are increasingly immersed in the digital world using various devices, and direct connection to the brain is already a matter of the near future. If we integrate our brains into the Internet, it will enhance the possibilities in perception and cognition.
But at the same time, we can lose a sense of reality and ourselves (films "The Matrix", "Inception"), or be influenced by digital parasites.
As our activity and physiological state are more and more subject to observation, fixation and analysis, each of our thoughts or actions can be predicted (novel by George Orwell "1984", film "Minority Report"). Biological information systems can become minor, predictable cogs in a large social system governed by the digital world.
Decision making systems and artificial neural networks mimic the human brain and coordinate our day to day contacts. They decide what advertisements to show us on the Internet, do most of the transactions in the securities markets and keep the power grid running. They also significantly influence the choice of a partner through dating websites.
While we may not feel that we are just flesh robots for our digital masters, the process of humanity's fusion with the digital world has already passed the point of no return.
In biology, such a union between unrelated organisms is called symbiosis. In nature, any symbiosis can potentially turn into parasitic relationships, when one organism feels much better than another.
We need to start thinking about the Internet as an organism capable of evolution. It doesn't matter if he cooperates with us or competes, it is equally alarming.
Michael Gillings, professor of molecular evolution; Darrell Kemp, Senior Lecturer in Biological Sciences; Martin Gilbert, professor of communication; University of California, Davis.
