Growing things through synthetic biology will replace current forms of manufacturing. Oversimplified for ease of understanding, based on what is going on today in biotechnology, for example, at Ginkgo Bioworks, founded by five brilliant students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in the next 50 years synthetic biology will combine with technology to replace manufacturing for job growth and supplying the world with everything from food to cell phones to tall buildings and much more.
Put simply, in the future, by manipulating and programming atoms you will be able to “grow everything” from more food than the world can eat, as well as growing it in tiny spaces without chemicals, to growing most everything from cell phones and microchips without actually having to manufacture them, as well as building tall buildings and other complicated large structures without the need for cranes and heavy equipment.
Artificial intelligence (AI) uses machines to make decisions that before were decisions made only by humans. AI will combine with biotechnology to dominate the world. The world will go from the manufacturing and information age to the age of AI and biotech. Instead of needing a costly manufacturing plant to produce goods, goods will be created from a platform, like that Gingko Bioworks will provide. From here goods can be grown instead of manufactured, and these goods will not need a central location for manufacturing but can literally be grown in any location, anywhere, and most anyone will be able to come up with ideas for things to grow. Unlike today, all this can be accomplished without employees being forced to live and work at a central location like Silicon Valley, New York City or China or wherever.
Granted, it sounds like alien technology provided from outer space but it is not and it is here today. Now we can manipulate atoms and program cells to build products like the days when Henry Ford used an assembly line to build cars in the early 1900s. However, the next manufacturing revolution will come without having to build a costly manufacturing plant in one location.
Legumes, for example soybeans, are the most efficient manufacturing plant on the planet. Legumes are a vertical operation that inside the plant itself contains everything it needs to sustain life without requiring outside influencers like fertilizer, pesticides and lots of space to grow and harvest a large crop. Taking direction from the vertical system inside soybeans is now the direction we are headed in manufacturing with AI and biotech. Plant a seed and it grows with magic from sun, water, and earth but now we can use biotech for programming cells to synthetically grow all physical things. Making things on the cheap will not be through manufacturing in the future but, instead, will be accomplished through a basis in biology culminating in AI and biotechnology.
The most sustainable manufacturing on the planet is through biology found in nature, for example in how trees and plants grow, and now we can program nature’s cells through biological software and hardware to manufacture all things physical. Through biotech we can grow all things physical easier, faster, cleaner, cheaper and with a stable, sustainable supply of material. Unlike manufacturing today, biotech manufacturing will be sustainable by the planet itself, allowing us to ‘synthetically’ manufacture everything from leather to cotton, to all foods, to electronics to anything, everything and all things physical by programming atoms found naturally in biology.
Human programmers, which can be located anywhere and everywhere on the planet without the need of being placed in any central location, will replace assembly line workers. These millions of programmers will use advanced biotech to grow things replacing manufacturing with growing. Millions of jobs will be open for ‘designers’, meaning those that design physical things to grow, as well as for ‘programmers’ that program the growth of the things that have been designed to grow.
In the beginning, biotech will be growing better-for-you foods faster, cheaper, cleaner, and in greater quantities in tiny spaces compared to how food is grown today, and in a sustainable fashion using fewer of the earth’s resources. However, in 30 to 50 years we will be growing electronics without manufacturing plants and growing buildings without the use of heavy equipment, like cranes, which will replace the need for huge, costly heavy equipment or building manufacturing plants in out of the way places or overseas. As has already been publicly noted and upheld by those in the know the world over, whoever dominates AI, and now biotechnological design and programming, will dominate the world.
SUPPLEMENTAL SOURCE: BLOOMBERG BUSINESS NEWS INTERVIEW WITH CEO OF GINKGO BIOWORKS 11/10/19