Christopher (Chris) Wills is Professor Emeritus of Biology at UCSD. He is the recipient of the 1999 Award for the Public Understanding of Science and Technology, given by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is an evolutionary biologist and his most recent book, on why ecosystems matter, was published by Oxford University Press in 2024 (1).
Dear Chris,
What could be achieved if there was a public or nonprofit AI effort with the same scale and level of funding as the current large private efforts? What would be the benefits for society?
Chris:
In my recent publications, including my last book (1), I have described our increased knowledge of the complex interactions in ecosystems, the dangerous situations in which many of them find themselves, and what could be done to restore their richness and diversity. There are huge stretches of the planet where we have already pretty much wrecked them. I give examples in my book of places in Central Asia and of some coral reefs, among many others, where you see so much damage that you know that something fundamental has to be done in order to be able to restore them as working ecosystems.
We could make a pretty good start on repairing them if we were to learn how to jump-start the process using the amazing abilities of ecosystems to evolve. And all this is done not through the organisms cooperating with each other, it's through the organisms competing the way they always did and competing in such a way that they begin to generate more diversity. Diversity leads to more diversity, and the more diverse the ecosystem, the more stable it tends to be, simply because there is such a wide variety of different creatures all competing away that no single species is likely to take over the whole system. That taking-over, unfortunately, has already happened in many ecosystems that are out of whack.
So the question is, how do you get them back to something that works? You have to ask what are the resources that even the simplest ecosystem has to have to be able to keep on evolving.
And those resources, we're beginning to understand, involve the bigger organisms, the middle-sized organisms, and the teeny-weeny ones, all interacting. The viruses play a huge role because they carry genes around from one group of organisms to another and when they do, this opens up incredible opportunities for evolution to take place.
The big organisms have a different approach to heredity and to evolution. Some big organisms possess enormously sophisticated systems that allow them to adapt to new situations and new environments. An example has been provided by a recent paper by Ole Seehausen and his group, who have been studying cichlid fishes in East African lakes, especially in Lake Victoria. Lake Victoria frequently dries up and then fills up again. To survive in these conditions the cichlid fishes have evolved a way of rapidly generating new species adapted to the new conditions. These fishes have what you might call little toolboxes among their genes which consist of collections of genes linked to each other on chromosomes. And these genes control a variety of different developmental pathways that allow the fishes to quickly speciate as these chunks sort out into the new populations. They're sort of poised to evolve because they've done it before, again and again. They have the tools for evolvability.
We are more and more appreciating the complexity of ecosystems and collecting data that show it. Computers can certainly help to analyze the data and keep track of patterns that we might miss. No human being can keep track of the enormous amount of data that are being generated. But we must carefully validate any suggested pattern. We also need to improve the quality of the data, not just their quantity, and develop better technologies to measure them. For example, some of the new technologies to measure base modifications in the genome are very impressive but can be expensive to use on a large scale.
Another point I make in my recent book is that balanced natural ecosystems are essential for our survival. Attempts to build artificial ones that are separated from the rest of the planet have all resulted in failures.
Scientific knowledge can play an essential role in guiding us. I use computational methods in my research, and while I do not use AI directly, I can see its potential. One aspect that worries me, however, is that the advanced AI systems developed by private companies have not been set up to explain the intermediate steps that lead to a certain conclusion. We should be able to know all the things that they tried out and didn't work, and why, and what criteria they used to decide. There should be more transparency.
We are encouraging researchers at different career stages to share ideas about complex science problems that could benefit from a large-scale AI effort. We found that motivation and recognition could be provided if you and other well-known scientists were willing to talk to people that suggest the best ideas. You would be the judge and decide if any idea is for you deserving of attention. Any scientist selected might receive advice but could also be a potential collaborator. Many ideas will be produced, and society will take notice. Would you be willing to talk to any of these scientists?
Chris:
Yes, of course. I have participated in scientific collaborations during all my scientific career, recently in large international ones. I was happy to see cases where even scientists from states with governments that did not have friendly relations where able to work together.
I have also benefited from advice received from mentors. The most well-known probably has been Theodosius Dobzhansky, with which I worked at Berkeley in the 1960s. Dobzhansky had many students, and he could keep track of what everybody had been doing. Every day he wrote dozens of letters to students and collaborators in different countries. He just juggled everything continuously and I was really impressed.
This seems similar to what Dulbecco told us in his interview, and to the role that other mentors like Max Delbruck were able to play in keeping trust and communication open within a field, as described in the historical section of this website.
Chris:
Those were the old days. In some areas it might still be like that but in others now there is too much competition to allow complete openness, as Dulbecco and others also noted. We all fall for the weaknesses of the time, I think.
I have noticed, however, some improvements, for example the use of bioRxiv for preprints that allows people to receive appropriate recognition as original discoverers even if the final publication is delayed. I hope this initiative will also help, at least for sharing ideas about the broad questions we are discussing.
REFERENCES
1- Wills, Christopher. Why Ecosystems Matter: Preserving the Key to Our Survival. Oxford University Press, 2024.