Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 19, 2025

A Bioinformatics Pipeline for Investigating Molecular Evolution and Gene Expression using RNA-seq
Published on: May 28, 2021
Pan-Evo: The Evolution of Information and Biology's Part in This
1Evolution & Ecology Research Centre, School of Biological Earth and Environmental Science, UNSW-Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia.
Abstract:
Many people wonder whether biology, including humans, will benefit or experience harm from new developments in information such as artificial intelligence (AI). Here, it is proposed that biological and non-biological information might be components of a unified process, 'Panevolution' or 'Pan-Evo', based on four basic operations-innovation, transmission, adaptation, and movement. Pan-Evo contains many types of variable objects, from molecules to ecosystems. Biological innovation includes mutations and behavioural changes; non-biological innovation includes naturally occurring physical innovations and innovation in software. Replication is commonplace in and outside biology, including autocatalytic chemicals and autonomous software replication. Adaptation includes biological selection, autocatalytic chemicals, and 'evolutionary programming', which is used in AI. The extension of biological speciation to non-biological information creates a concept called 'Panspeciation'. Panevolution might benefit or harm biology, but the harm might be minimal if AI and humans behave intelligently because humans and the machines in which an AI resides might split into vastly different environments that suit them. That is a possible example of Panspeciation and would be the first speciation event involving humans for thousands of years. This event will not be particularly hostile to humans if humans learn to evaluate information and cooperate better to minimise both human stupidity and artificial simulated stupidity (ASS-a failure of AI).
Related Concept Videos
The Evidence for Evolution
What is Evolutionary History?
Evolutionary Psychology
Characteristics of Life
Eukaryotic Evolution
Contrary to the endosymbiont theory, the eukaryote-first hypothesis proposes that the simpler prokaryotic and...
Synteny and Evolution
Around 80 million years ago, the human and mice lineages diverged from the common ancestor. During the course of evolution, the ancestral...

