A Review on Technologies Evolving Faster than Human Biological Evolution

Technology is evolving demonstrably faster than human biological evolution. While human evolution is a slow process of genetic changes occurring over millennia, technological development follows an exponential curve, with accelerating growth in areas like computing power, AI, and biotechnology. 

Contrasting speeds of evolution

	Technological Evolution	Biological Human Evolution
Pace	Exponentially accelerating, with breakthroughs happening faster than ever before. For example, it took 2.4 million years for ancestors to control fire, but only 66 years to go from the first flight to a moon landing.	Very slow, with significant changes occurring over tens of thousands of years. While the rate has accelerated in recent millennia due to cultural shifts, it is still orders of magnitude slower than technological progress.
Mechanism	The deliberate and cumulative process of human innovation and engineering. It is driven by intentional design, scientific discovery, and the purposeful transfer of knowledge.	The random process of natural selection, where genetic mutations appear by chance. Beneficial traits spread through a population over many generations.
Driving Force	Human intelligence and, increasingly, artificial intelligence that can improve itself.	Environmental pressures, population changes, and genetic variations.
Information Storage	Digital information is doubling approximately every 2.5 years.	Human genetic information has remained largely unchanged for millennia, though recent variations are driven by rapid population growth.

Potential consequences of the speed gap

The growing disparity between the pace of technological and human biological evolution has several significant implications. 

The technological singularity

• A potential rupture in history: The idea of a "technological singularity" describes a hypothetical future point when technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible. This could be triggered by an "intelligence explosion" as an advanced AI enters a feedback loop of continuous self-improvement, rapidly surpassing human intellect.
• Varying predictions and outcomes: Experts disagree on the plausibility and timing of a singularity, but futurist Ray Kurzweil famously predicted it could occur around 2045. Potential outcomes range from unimaginable benefits, like curing global problems, to existential risks, such as losing control over superintelligent machines. 

Impacts on human society and biology

• Institutions are left behind: The rapid pace of change makes it difficult for governments and legal frameworks to keep up. Ethical and societal guidelines cannot be developed quickly enough to manage new technologies like advanced AI and genetic engineering.
• The rise of human augmentation: To keep up with accelerating technology, humanity is already moving toward biological enhancements. Developments in neuroprosthetics and genetic engineering offer the potential to augment human intelligence and abilities.
• Ethical dilemmas in enhancement: Genetic engineering offers the prospect of editing the human germline to enhance traits beyond what is possible through natural evolution. This raises profound ethical questions about access, social equity, and the very definition of what it means to be human.
• Cognitive and social changes: Artificial intelligence is already changing how we think and interact, raising concerns about privacy, bias, and over-reliance on AI for critical tasks. The evolution of human-computer interaction is also creating more immersive and intuitive interfaces, further blurring the lines between human and machine capabilities.