What If DNA Code is Artificial Intelligence?

We are an expression of an immense mystery which we cannot objectify – because we are the subject and not any object.

Photo by Sangharsh Lohakare on Unsplash

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Years ago, I had what I thought was an epiphany after watching a video on TED.  In the video futurist Juan Enriquez compares the sequence of letters comprising the biochemicals of DNA with the code on a floppy disc.

Holding up the disc in the video, Enriquez says:

“Because this thing codes ones and zeros, and this thing codes A T, C, G’s, and it sits up there, absorbing energy on a tree, and one fine day it has enough energy to say, execute, and it goes thump. Right?

And when it does that, pushes an .EXE (Executable), what it does is, it executes the first line of code, which reads just like that, AATCAGGGACCC, and that means: make a root Next line of code: make a stem. Next line of code, TACGGGG: make a flower that's white, that blooms in the spring that smells like this.”

(From my book “If DNA Is Software, Who Wrote the Code?” still up on Amazon)

I compared this to HTML where the code might say:
Create a new page
Add a title
Make it bold and dark blue
Center a picture below the title – and so on.

In the book, I said that seeing the “AATCAGGGACCC” of DNA operate in the same way as our own software (and this was eight years ago) suggests that it is in fact an organic operating system for our bodies.

It also brought up this question: – we know how our own software is developed. It involves humans writing or generating the code that completes tasks such as word processing, spreadsheets and now video and on and on.

So I asked, Who Programmed DNA?

The simplistic responses included “it’s Evolution” – which makes no sense because evolution is actually controlled by the program.  There would be no evolution without DNA, not the other way around.

The key point was that like our own software, DNA clearly must be the product of (a) Mind.

It could not have come about by chance and points to the existence of higher intelligence somewhere or somehow.

Did the Programmer Have to Be a Person?

I speculated that it was also quite possible that the origin of the code was the expression of Nature’s intelligence -- which has yet to be discovered.

It turns out that my ideas were first raised by Francis Crick, one of the two scientists who won the Nobel Prize for discovering DNA.

Because Crick thought that DNA -- because of its complexity and logical structure – must be older than the earth itself – he coined the term “Panspermia”.  This was his theory that life on Earth originated elsewhere and came here on comets and meteors or in some other way.

On History Channel’s Ancient Aliens, of course, they claim it was “directed” Panspermia by an advanced civilization, but we have no evidence of that.  So far.

What we do have, however, is the reality that DNA is code – as Enriquez says elsewhere, so “Life is Code”.

We also now have evidence that lower life forms and organic materials including DNA can survive in outer space, and have found traces of these on meteors and comets.

Human Programmers Have Been Busy

And now we have also been confronted by the possible consequences of an entirely new kind of program – Artificial Intelligence.

The thing is AI is also nothing more than another set of code that simulates human thought and behavior.

So, if Life is Code, and AI is also Code, could the code behind life, DNA, be artificial intelligence?

And what might that even mean, in the context of it being of unknown origin?

Again, an advanced civilization would likely also have AI, so did they create Life by programming DNA? 

Wouldn’t such an advanced species presumably also be alive, so with DNA in their systems – creating a paradox?  It’s a delicious mystery.

In my view, however, the development of AI by humans dramatically ratchets up the stakes.

Not only does the development of software programs for productivity and graphics suggest that any logically structured code must be an intellectual product, but now we have created programs that – write new code and can replicate themselves.

That’s why there is so much concern about AI potentially posing a great danger.

But the mystery of the code that exists in our bodies and expresses the intentions of Life, and can now be edited by CRISPR, is far greater.

Our technology has exposed the deeper mystery behind our existence and consciousness – because what else could intelligence be but an expression of consciousness?

And because we have now created Code that writes Code, we really have no way of knowing whether the origin of DNA (and Life) is another Life form (contradictory) or – perhaps even another program.

It is a confusing conundrum logically; but the really important takeaway is that all of this is proof that while we have mental activity in our brains and parts of our nervous system, Mind is really at the heart of Existence or Life itself.

The discovery of programs that can mimic human intentions and create new programs puts us into an entirely new and mysterious universe.

Tesla Was Right

"The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all previous centuries of its existence." ---Nikola Tesla.

Turns out the mystery is US.

We are an expression of an immense mystery which we cannot objectify – because we are the subject and not any object.

Could this realization or recognition by a critical mass of humanity finally shed us of much of our conditioned beliefs -- and expand our view of ourselves and our potential?

If nothing else it once again points to the reality of a unity of everything.  Why?  Because an unknown entity (not a “thing”), which we simplistically label “Mind” or “intellect” is behind everything.

And because we are also “it”, the reality of what mind may be has evaded our understanding.

But in this scenario one thing is clear – the concept of ‘artificial’ is now meaningless.

Using the word “artificial” separates us from Nature as having created a completely “human” intelligence when we are neither separate from Nature nor is AI truly “intelligent”.

Unless we consider having a large vocabulary and being able to come up with the perfect word (or label) a sign of intelligence. Then we can call ChatGPT “intelligent” – but it still isn’t thinking.

Maybe Intelligence (or Mind) is ALL?

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(Tom Bunzel was a contributor to Collective Evolution and now writes for The Pulse.  His new book "Conversations with Nobody: Getting to Know ChatGPT" – a book written with AI, about AI and giving a taste of AI, is available on Amazon.)