The Other Singularity

Most people have come across the idea of the technological singularity, when technology goes through a step-change, and becomes something so radically different that it transcends human capacity to understand it (not least because sentient AI will have arisen to do the understanding for us).

There's still plenty of debate about whether such a singularity will ever occur: much scepticism, for example, has been expressed about the likelihood of AI attaining consciousness.

But there's another technological singularity that we are hurtling towards that is certain to happen: the point at which we can sequence anybody's genome for an essentially trivial amount (whether it's £100 or £10 doesn't really matter). And that singularity is not only bound to occur, it seems likely to happen soon, judging by this Guardian report.

This worries me: we are simply not ready for the knowledge that this will give us. As I've written elsewhere, both in both Digital Code of Life and in other features, cheap sequencing will give us knowledge and extraordinary possibilities, but of kind most may prefer not to have.

Do you really want to know that you have a high likelihood of developing an incurable disease? Do you want to know the true father of your child? Do you want to know which people it would be really foolish to marry, because their DNA combined with yours would increase dramatically the risk of certain diseases? Do you really want other people - your employers, insurance companies, the government - to know your genetic strengths and weaknesses?

I thought not.

Since this singularity is inevitable (assuming civilisation survives the next few years, which is not guaranteed given the current threat of pandemic 'flu), we need to start thinking through these issues now, so that when it happens, legislation has been drafted, and people - all of us - are ready to begin to cope with the consequences.

Update: And there's another point, which I've missed so far. It came up in this thread discussing the worrying growth of the US DNA database.

As the writer points out, it is now easy to make DNA to order: so once you can sequence it cheaply, as described above, you could steal a hair, say, from someone, sequence it, then manufacture as many fragments as you wanted. This could then be used to incriminate that person in all kinds of ways.

Given the belief that DNA is somehow infallible, it will be even harder to disprove this kind of evidence. Your DNA was on the murder weapon (true), so it must have been you (false)?