Seti director Seth Shostak
Seth Shostak, a senior astronomer, said this may be the last century humans as we know them dominate the earth.
Desinger babies and artificial intelligence (AI) will lead to a new dominant species, he said.
Mr Shostak, who is also director of the Search for extraterrestrial intelligence (Seti) Institute, says the advancements in these two fields could lead to “alien” species that take our place at the top of the chain on Earth by 2100.
Genetic engineering will allow us to biologically modify our children
In his blog on Seti’s website, Shostak asks “could this be humanity’s last century?”
He argues our children and grandchildren may “usher in the last act for Homo sapiens” with the rise of genetically engineered children.
Shostak writes: “Re-engineering our children will transform our species even faster. We can eventually produce offspring that are as different from us as dogs are from gray wolves.
AI could rewrite the future of humanity
“The haphazard, bottom-up alterations to our species occasioned by Darwinian evolution will yield to the directed improvements of future engineers.”
He believes that the rise of AI will be the biggest influence on the future of humanity, because unlike genetically engineered children, “it is less a matter of improving our descendants than replacing them with our engineered successors”.
Mr Shostak adds that these two completely re-write our future, and warns that by the end of the century, Homo sapiens will be virtually unrecognisable from what we currently know and have known for the last 50,000 years.
Shostak envisions homes such as the ISS
The 72-year old added: “These are changes that don't just shape our future. They knead it into something inconceivably different.
“And sure, you may quibble about whether everything I've described is going to take place this century, but do you really think it won't happen in the coming thousand years?
“The people of the 11th century might be disconcerted by today's technology, but they would have no trouble recognising us. However, it's unlikely we would recognise humans a millennium hence.”
More breakthroughs that he envisions by 2100 include understanding biology at a molecular level, which will help us cure diseases and allow us to further advance genetic engineering.