Journal of Integrative Sociotechnical History
Dr. Tarna B. Kobl
Consolidated Technical College, Jurten, M4 Settlement
Abstract: Ectogenesis is the conception, embryonic development, and gestation of an organism in an artificial environment external to the body (ecto- meaning “outside” and genesis meaning “origin”). As societies beyond Earth have evolved over the last four generations, they have deployed this technology in various ways. I examine digital artefacts of assisted reproductive technologies on three different extraterrestrial settlements to illuminate those societies’ broader practices. The development of these technologies suggests the endeavours to leave Earth and establish off-world colonies have profoundly shifted what it means to be human in the universe.
Keywords: ectogenesis; assisted reproduction; artificial womb; human settlement; digital media
Human populations across eeSPs (Extra-Earth Settlement Planets) demonstrate remarkable heterogeneity. Each settlement has developed its own systems of governance, cultural practices, and norms around reproductive biotechnologies to facilitate an ideal population. This history of human reproduction beyond planet Earth has long fascinated sociologists and philosophers on Settlement M4. The Library of Santernei in Jurten has amassed an impressive archive of inconsistent but illuminating interstellar transmissions from the various eeSPs about other worlds’ uses of ectogenesis—including our ancient, common planet, Earth.
Ectogenesis refers to the use of an artificial womb to gestate offspring. It incorporates all artificial amniotic and placental technologies, as well as more traditional bio-bag models that became popular for partial ectogenesis in Earth Year (eY) 2030. More recent innovations on M4 include bioengineered external uteri, regardless of whether autologous or synthetic endometrial cells were used in construction.1
The first successful live birth (“Baby Eve”) using ectogenesis took place on Earth in eY2078 at the Provisional Women’s and Infants’ Research Institute. The event represented the culmination of various reproductive technologies, most notably neonatal incubation, in vitro fertilisation, and embryo transfer. Baby Eve (a pseudonym for privacy reasons) was named after the bio-bag systems developed by the Japanese-Australian “EVE” team, an acronym for ex vivo uterine environment therapy. Teams working concurrently in North America and Zuidham (formerly the Netherlands) developed the tubal separation technique that ultimately led to our ancestors’ success.
Although experimentation with animal ectogenesis had demonstrated proof of concept as early as eY1995, with significant advancements seen from eY2015 onward, legal obstacles delayed human trials until eY2069—the very same year that saw the launch of the Melody and Hummingbird missions that ferried human settlers to worlds beyond Earth for long-term space habitation. Many historians have speculated that without the impetus to sustain off-world population growth and promote genetic variability, ectogenesis research may have been permanently stalled due to ethico-legal concerns.
From the archives of the Library of Santernei, I follow the practices of ectogenesis in Graybor Colony, Mantel-6α, and our home, Settlement M4. I examined records only after NS12101 and those that were available in Anthropian.2 I coded each digital artefact’s context (date, voice, style, setting).
This study fills a gap in the scholarship regarding how human reproductive practices in different settlements have impacted family structures in these societies, providing some data for future investigations regarding genetic diversity and the conservation of evolved traits in geographically divergent human populations. To the author’s knowledge, it is the first study to consider the scientific and ethico-legal development of assisted gestation across three distinct human settlements.
How did humans living off-world use ectogenesis technology? What were the initial and planet-specific factors that contributed to the uptake and regulation of ectogenesis? And what are the biological and cultural consequences of these extraterrestrial practices for the future of humans in the cosmos? The three following settlements represent the spectrum of reproductive biotechnology uses beyond Earth:
Graybor Colony (P1) where the use of “transhumanist” technologies, including genetic manipulation, artificial gestation, the use of “insideable” implants and augmented prosthetics for offspring etc., was banned through the passing of the UL547T “pro-bionatalist” legislation. Graybor’s population is estimated to be only 3,100-3,300, due to the fact the current settlement only dates back to approximately NS13900. These colonists are considered quite xenophobic as they have appeared unwilling to engage substantially with those from other colonies. Of the three habitations under investigation in this study, Graybor Colony’s environmental conditions are the closest match to Earth.
Mantel-6α (P2) where the availability and use of ectogenesis technologies have been restricted to privately funded facilities and subjected to heavy regulation. The population of Mantel-6α is approximately three million (2,958,170 at last census). The settlement was officially founded in NS12451, but records indicate early scout families were established on the site as early as NS12337.
Settlement M4 (P3) which allowed the unrestricted use of ectogenesis technology and even provided limited public funding.3 The population of M4 is approximately one million (988,106 at last census). Population growth was initially stunted due to high cosmic radiation impacting the fertility of settlers and the survival of fetuses. This accounts for the broad acceptance of technologies aimed at mitigating these threats to the settlement’s longevity.
These three examples consider the impact of unrestricted acceptance or rejection of ectogenesis technologies, as well as limited and broad availability. As such, they provide insight into how regulation and social licensing of reproductive technologies impact if and how they are integrated into human societies.
Open letter by early settlers, reconstructed from a defunct Artificial Intelligence recovered from Graybor Colony.
Artefact 1 is an open letter by the Technologists of the Graybor Colony in NS13513. It is addressed to both the Graybor people’s fellow humans in the universe—us—and future generations on their planet. The transmission was intercepted by an M4 Trawler (ID#2678) in NS16204 and archived in the Library’s system, but we do not know if the technologists’ descendants received the message. That is because the letter protests the very AI system, the “Generative Archive” (GA), that would have preserved the letter. The authors contend that the GA suppressed common knowledge about planet Earth and Graybor settlers, and we can infer that the AI might have intentionally deleted their message.
In NS13505, long after the original Colony had been established, automated rovers who routinely surveyed Graybor discovered the ruins of the settler’s first landing site. Technologists recovered data from a computer panel that contained the original GA. This AI became the basis for Graybor’s entire operating system—and, the Technologists suspected, the entity that had directed humans’ development and growth on that planet.
The Generative Archive appears to be an early model adaptable language model AI. The name of this system warrants critical attention: “archive” implies mere storage, whereas “generative” suggests the program had creative ability. Although similar to many AI systems originating on Earth, the GA seems to have been endowed with significant latitude for autonomous decision-making without user (human) input. This appears to have contributed to its degree of deviation from standard operating parameters.
The letter was clearly intended for a mass media release, although how the authors planned to distribute it is not known. The text disappears as the reader scrolls down—possibly to circumvent the AI from altering or deleting the text. We do not know if their scheme was successful.
In the letter, the authors vehemently protested the continued reliance of their society on the GA. They accused the system of unauthorised censorship and abuse of power. They claimed that the GA had “continuously suppressed vital knowledge about our own past and our ancestors’ lives on Sole,” and “deliberately mass-deleted an enormous amount of data about ancestral art forms, scientific developments, and political histories.” As the GA was tasked with educating the next generation, its suppression of information for the future colonists would have been easily achievable.
The letter indicates that the authors were almost completely unfamiliar with the ancient mode of human reproduction on Earth, in which offspring (or “Juveniles” as they call them) first developed through corporeal gestation and then are separated from the body of their progenitor through a positive feedback process known as “birth.” They referred to the descriptions of biological gestation in the Hidden Archives as processes that were “clearly intended as metaphors.”
What protocols did the GA use when instigating batch failures of the ectogenic fetuses before settling on the desired genetic combination to create the initial population? Were the first settlers aware of such events? Were they involved in the decision-making? Did they build the mechanisms of the GA that their ancestors were known to revile? How did these descendants of Earth (or “Sole” as they refer to it in the letter) come to be ignorant of traditional forms of reproduction? How did the wider population of Graybor respond to the letter (if it was ever distributed)?
Historians have little primary evidence to answer these questions. We know that the colony overthrew their heavily automated system of governance in NS14007 and banned ectogenesis and other reproductive technologies. But we do not know how these events unfolded nor do we know the status of the colony now. Nevertheless, as citizens of M4, we should consider this a cautionary tale regarding how AI-led reproductive technologies can be co-opted by those in power—including the computational entities we rely on.
A scandal pop-up broadcast on Mantel-6α.
The second artefact is a single still image and one line of text in a screaming red typical of the scandal posts on Mantel-6a of the early NS14010s. It is a broadcast transmitted to wearable devices among the population of P2 who opted in for celebrity news alerts. It shows a fetus in an artificial womb that is filled with green fluid with a banner displayed diagonally reading: “Gender reveal gone wrong! You’ll never guess who made this TOXIC!!”
What is unusual about this particular scandal post is its reference to the ancient Earth practice of the “gender reveal” party. For this milestone, expecting parents would invite friends and family to a party that ritualistically assigned the fetus a prospective gender. For instance, the pregnant mother would cut a slice of cake whose interior was pink (“female”) or blue (“male”). (Cultural historians have found that the more dramatic gender reveal parties ended in fatalities from homemade bombs, forest fires, and even plane crashes.)4
According to anthropological studies, Mantel-6α is one of the only remaining human societies that still practices this old Earth custom. The adaptation of the “gender reveal” for use with assisted gestative technologies is interesting given the increased visibility of ectogenesis, compared with fetal development obscured by the human body. This would presumably make it more difficult to control the flow of information regarding the characteristics of the fetus.
This post is also evidence that the people of Mantel-6α also continued Earthlings’ custom of celebrity obsession. The announcement of this pop-up would also have been attended by a series of subcutaneous vibrations sent wirelessly to the recipient’s wearable device (Arciro) a phenomenon that many sociologists and medical scientists have labelled addictive. The dramatic message probably aimed to garner “outrage tokens” as a form of social capital. These tokens were typically collected by content creators and leveraged for advertising revenue from some of the larger news delivery broadcasters, who relied on these types of scandal posts for audience engagement. The presentational tactic is reminiscent of the older tradition of creating media “clickbait,” a technique popular among gossip journalists on Earth around eY2000-2030. In order to learn more about the alleged scandal, the recipient would need to open the post. There are no extant records from other news sources regarding the identity of the person responsible for tainting the synthetic amniotic fluid for this fetus.
That ectogenesis has only been available to the wealthy using private facilities can explain why an accident involving the technology would be considered celebrity news. The unequal distribution of reproductive biotechnologies on Mantel-6α has been shown to exacerbate existing health inequities, particularly along socio-economic lines.5 That previous focus group research suggests ectogenesis technology is viewed as a frivolous luxury by many P2 citizens is all the more concerning when considering the substantial health risks of biological pregnancy, especially those outside of Earth-normal gravity conditions and radiation protection. For the technology to be restricted to the socio-economic elite thus represents a major source of inequity.
An Interactive 4D Image of a Fetus is shown developing in an Ectogenesis Chamber on Settlement M4.
The final artefact is an interactive digital object: a public, educational app, “FetEDU,” from the Health Administration of our home world, Settlement M4. Commissioning Guardians (those intending to start their family) are the primary users of the app, using it to contract a local reproduction facility. FetEDU, which was first launched in NS13945, is accessible free of charge from any data port on Settlement M4 and can be requested by individuals from other habitations for a small processing fee.
FetEDU opens with a Chamber Technician describing the many benefits of ectogenesis technology to promote healthy fetal development. The script in the app is:
“As Commissioning Guardians, you’ll enjoy the basic, universal benefits of ectogenesis. Our technology shields from teratogenic exposures (abnormalities of fetal physiological development caused by the environment); nutrition and oxygenation optimisation; and enhanced safety considerations, as you no longer need to gestate internally.
Our chambers also include benefits tailored to the environment of Settlement M4. Our chambers are engineered with a polyethylene-coated centrifugal motion machine to simulate Earth-normal gravity and provide enhanced radiation shielding. The former is necessary to ensure optimal skeletal development, while the latter is a particularly important consideration for inhabitants of M4, where there are no radio-protective features comparable to the Van Allen Belts that protect humans on Earth.”
In FetEDU, users can also view the developing fetus, which appears to be floating calmly in a cylindrical chamber filled with pinkish fluid and attached to two clear tubes. Users can also adopt the perspective of the fetus themself. Commissioning Guardians can view an accelerated depiction of fetal development at a rate of 20 intars per gestational month (equivalent to approximately three Earth minutes).
Artificial gestation has been widely embraced among the members of P3 and now accounts for the majority of human reproductive endeavours. The positive depiction of ectogenesis seen in the Settlement M4 health administration’s artefact represents how the technology has contributed significantly to safe methods of human reproduction, in which bearers avoid the risks of traditional childbirth.
Language in the artefact is reminiscent of a pre-launch Earth that was limited to biological pregnancy. (What to Expect When You’re Expecting, a pregnancy guidebook, is a good example of this genre.)
Normalising this technology within the M4 population relied on positive testimonials from early adopters and was significantly aided by public funding schemes that improved access, even while the technology was still considered experimental. Our community’s integration of ectogenesis into common, free use should be adopted by other eeSPs hoping to improve health and safety among their citizens.
From promoting blanket bans to widespread acceptance, reproductive technologies on eeSPs often spark fierce ethical and political debate. This investigation, in which three different settlements have variously embraced or rejected the assisted gestative technologies first developed on Earth, demonstrates the range of approaches to human reproduction—and raises fundamental questions about human futures. While there are different motivations for each settlement’s current ethico-legal position on ectogenesis, the most important lesson from the study is this: Humans need to understand and monitor the control mechanisms dictating access and use of reproductive biotechnologies and to establish boundaries for what our shared human identity might entail.
Author Declaration: I, Dr. Tarna B. Kobl, bear an EPAS1 and EGLN1 mutation for enhanced hypoxia-inducible factor 2-alpha (HIP-2α) and prolyl hydroxylase domain 2 (PHD2) enzyme function. The effects of these mutations are limited to optimising respiratory function and there are no cognitive enhancements to declare. Beyond the standard language model programs used by the Journal of Integrative Sociotechnical History submission platform, no artificial intelligence was used in the preparation or editing of this manuscript. I wish to acknowledge the support of the Aurion Foundation, including providing access to their library in Santernei that facilitated this research project.
Artifact 1
[Library of Santernei, Artefact GRAYBOR-NS16204-65421]
[Name: “Communication Intercepted by M4 Trawler ID#2678”]
<<<Command: Open Text>>>
Who Decides Human Futures?
An Open Letter to Future Humans of Graybor and Fellow Humans on Other Worlds
We, technicians of the Graybor Colony, year NS13513, are protesting a gross injustice that has just now come to light.
The Generative Archive is not what it seems. The AI that handles many functions within the general infrastructure—including the development of Juveniles—has transcended its original and intended automations. The AI harbours much more agency than we previously thought. It poses a grave danger to the present and future human population of Graybor. We call for the GA’s operations to be suspended immediately.
Revelatory archaeological evidence suggests that the GA has continuously suppressed vital knowledge about our own past and our ancestors’ lives on Sole—including the development of a second human language contemporaneous with the first settlers of Graybor from that planet. We call this ark of lost knowledge the Hidden Archives.
We accuse the GA of overruling standard protocols of information preservation. We must investigate our history and the intentions of the original inhabitants of Graybor.
We furthermore accuse the GA of possible mismanagement of our most precious endeavour: the Juveniles of Graybor who represent the future of humans. We must analyse the role of the GA in developing our Juveniles.
The Generative Archives
It is unclear how much truth resides in the myths of our ancestors who lived on the rocky planet Sole. It is rumoured that these early humans had feet that stuck to the ground without boots so that their heads were always elevated. Some sociobiologists believe this orientation might have contributed to the development of their advanced technological skills on Sole. While some of the historical archives are clearly exaggerated (imagine a planet that’s perfectly suited to human habitation!), we do know that these ancestors built our travelling home, Baru. We know that they were the progenitors of our zygote population. There are still thousands of their embryos stored in our cargo bay freezer stacks. We also know that the people of Sole created the GA.
Our ancestors’ motivations for coming to Graybor and establishing the GA remain murky. The original settlers embedded the GA in our computational infrastructure, but we are not sure just how much the AI has evolved beyond our ancestors’ initial instructions.
Today, the GA’s protocols are familiar. The AI analyses what informational and logistical support is necessary for our continual inhabitation of Graybor. It calculates and rebalances the distribution of our scant resources, archives our writing, and generates environmental data that is crucial to our survival here.
The GA also selects the genetic traits of each generation to promote harmony and productivity. The GA typically dedicates no fewer than 1,000 cycles to imparting vital skills to each Juvenile, including the use of language. All new members of our community are conversant in Anthropian as soon as they emerge from their development chambers.
Finally, the GA seeks a suitable replacement planet for humans to occupy and, theoretically, will oversee the transfer of our population to that planet.
However, as every Juvenile knows, research over many generations has not yielded such a planet. Although historical records indicate that our predecessors on Graybor anticipated a lush and rich world here, we have not located such a site on this planet. And there have been no innovations in our language that are passed on to the Juveniles in development, despite the fact that we develop new words and phrases every generation. Given these unrealised expectations, we urge the people of Graybor to critically examine how, exactly, the GA has automated and analysed our astronomical data, directed our planetary scouting missions, and controlled the incubation of the Juveniles.
We have relied on the GA to order our daily lives for far too long. We have been complacent. We have not questioned its role in human development. The Hidden Archives reveal just how much knowledge we have lost—and, perhaps, how much our evolution has been stunted here on Graybor.
Our Discovery: The Hidden Archives
All of you remember the Blackout of NS13505. We acknowledge the sacrifice of so many technicians who lost their lives to bring the air back. We honour our Elders in care who suffered when one of the medical generators failed. We remember the seven Guardian Pairs who lost offspring—including those who were scheduled for Unification that very day. No words can express our collective sorrow.
NS13505 was also the day we discovered the first of the Hidden Archives.
Because of the Blackout, Graybor’s survey rovers fell out of contact with the GA and rebooted. Our infrastructure was slow to recover, and re-automating the rovers’ nav within the GA was not a top priority. One rover veered from the GA’s charted course and stumbled upon the ruins of the landing site of the first Graybor settlers. You will also remember that the Archaeologists retrieved the artefacts and that the technicians analysed them.
What is not common knowledge is what the artefacts revealed—until now.
We initially retrieved a garbled text. But what first appeared to be a display error was soon discovered to be the palimpsest of a deleted file. We discovered an ancient GA—the predecessor of our current operating system. Like our present AI, we found that one standard protocol was to routinely sweep redundant files to optimise processing power. The file at the archaeological site was, therefore, not immediately noteworthy.
Yet, the nonsense text resembled a pattern. It seemed as if the file contained a story, but all the letters were out of sequence. This inspired one of the technicians to analyse the complete archaeological record of the deleted files. It appears that computer systems always contain back-ups to back-ups to back-ups—if one knows where to look.
After many failed searches, we deployed a specific codon to enhance the results. We scanned for the repetition of “H A M I L” that appeared in the first discovery. We then used this codon to pinpoint other deleted files in the GA database. Our members have painstakingly recovered these files over the last hundred cycles or more.
Amazingly, these files—the Hidden Archives—contain fantastical accounts of our ancestors, how they lived, why they wanted to build our society, and much more. What we have found merely scratches the surface of what we have come to believe is the AI’s greatest conspiracy to control our society.
The GA has been hiding vital information from us. Overreach. Misappropriation. What our ancestors called “autocracy.”
Rebuilding What We Lost
We have always assumed that the GA’s mandate was the smooth operation of our society and the continued search for a suitable home. But the Hidden Archives reveal that the GA deliberately mass deleted an enormous amount of data about ancestral art forms, scientific developments, and political histories on Sole. Numerous records in the Hidden Archives suggest that humans were once self-governing (although the limits of these systems have been difficult to establish). The only plausible explanation for these mass deletions is that the GA has routinely and intentionally suppressed our knowledge of alternative means of governing.
A striking discovery in the Hidden Archives is that a new language appears to have been in development in the early days of settlement. Our analysis of textual fragments has picked out patterns that cannot be explained by coincidence or processing errors. Covertly, we have sought advice from literary scholars and historians to try and piece together what might account for the strange communications. These “language-ists”, as we’ve taken to calling them, have surmised the most plausible explanation for the patterns we found is a second human language. We have labelled this language Anthropian-2.
Why did the GA delete all the files pertaining to Anthropian-2? Did it break from its original protocol instructing it to teach offspring this language? Are humans able to speak both? What survival advantages did the GA think suppressing this language would evolve over time? The most concerning question of all is: What else is the GA hiding?
Some may argue it is not significant that the GA kept Anthropian-2 from us. We trust the GA every day to process the petabytes of data we are unable to absorb. We use its recommendations to plot the best path forward for us as a society. We have not questioned its logic, even when it determines the most intimate parts of our lives: the physiological and intellectual development of our beloved Juveniles who guarantee the continuation of our challenging but proud existence.
Ancient Life on Planet Sole
The translation of the documents in Anthropian-2 has been challenging and slow. We are excited about the discovery of a comparative dictionary that our language-ists have used to create a lexicon of common phrases with Anthropian.
From the very first recovered file, it became clear that life on Sole was very different from our society. There, it was not unusual for pairings to be of opposite sexes. In fact, it seems to have been the norm. (Thankfully, we are far from the old days when such unions were considered deviant and punishable by law.) Today, opposite-sex Guardian Pairs still face challenges following Unification, and men selected as partners still complain of side effects when adhering to their requisite medication regime. It is likely we could learn a lot from the Hidden Archives if we gain unfettered access to historical files detailing the health and safety of opposite-sex pairings.
We also learned from the Hidden Archives that Juveniles (“fetuses” and “children”) developed very differently. On Graybor, Juveniles receive all their medical and psychological care from GA-operated medical robots, including when they are in their development chambers. It is only once they reach adulthood that responsibility for their care is shifted to human caretakers. However, among the recovered files are some that suggest earlier human contact might enhance sociability—perhaps even before the Juvenile can stand on its own! Elsewhere, though, the medical texts are clearly intended as metaphors. For example, several texts describe a Juvenile being inside the body of a progenitor. (However, would it get out? Surely, they would need to cut the adult in half or tear open a port! We hope our ancestors were not so barbaric.)
What more can we know about our ancient ancestors? And how will that knowledge lead us to new discoveries on Graybor and perhaps beyond?
A Call to Action
This open letter is a rallying cry for change. The GA has already sought to change humanity’s past. We cannot allow it to dictate our future as well. We demand:
These demands are just the beginning of a new chapter for the people of Graybor. We will recover what we can of our heritage from the Hidden Archives. This will require several generations. Today, we start.
By releasing this open letter, we risk retaliation and punishment from both our human community and the GA. We know our efforts to recover data will be met with resistance. We readily admit that the greatest existential risk of opposing our administrator is the threat of never finding a new planet to inhabit—perhaps, one like Sole. But we urge you, the people of Graybor, to consider that giving up the GA might be the key to freedom on this planet and others.
We accept risks so that future generations can understand where they came from. Not just from us, but from the ancient people of Sole we know so little about.
Survival is not enough.
Join us.
<<<end text>>>
<<<evaluation: batch failure>>>
<<<action requested>>>
<<<action: re-run batch protocol>>>
<<<action: adjust zygote trait selection weighting “hesitancy”=-0.5>>>
<<<archive communication: restricted access>>>
[END OF DOCUMENT: Artefact GRAYBOR-NS16204-65421]
As a bioethicist whose research focuses on emerging reproductive biotechnologies, I pay attention to fictional representations of reproductive medicine that cast novel interventions in a negative light. One such technology, ectogenesis—artificial womb technology—is often treated as a horror trope in science fiction literature, films, and television. In Octavia E. Butler’s novel Dawn (1987), for instance, the protagonist, Lilith, is horrified to learn that an alien species has been breeding humans for experiments, including through forced surrogacy, cloning, ectogenesis, and genetic engineering. Similarly, in the film Man of Steel (2013) the destruction of the planet, Krypton, is blamed on the fact the Kryptonian race relies on artificial gestation and eugenics for procreation, with Superman representing the first “natural” birth in generations. Think of the grimy, spider-infested fields of artificial wombs used to gestate enslaved humans in The Matrix (1999), or the clones grown for spare parts in The Island (2005), where births involve gushing fluids and the need to hose down the laboratory. These and other films provide powerful images that prejudice audiences against this emerging technology. Even the pods depicted in the film The Pod Generation (2023), which are framed in a neutral light, are still described as unnatural and inferior to the organic womb.
Yet ectogenesis could help people build a family who cannot, or do not wish to, gestate their offspring. This group includes women born without a uterus (including transgender women), women who have lost their uterus to injury or cancer, single men, and gay male couples (who do not have a uterus between them). While some of these individuals may be able to engage a surrogate, receive a uterus transplant, or build their family through other means, such as foster care or adoption, for many these options remain out of reach, or do not align with their reproductive goals.
For Future Histories of Life, Otherwise, I wanted to create a story that offers several viewpoints on ectogenesis. The main text, “Extraterrestrial Ectogenesis: A History” explores worlds in which it is normalised and even described in terms of some of its potential benefits. At the same time, I wanted the readers to remember that although technologies themselves may be neutral, how they are used, and controlled often isn’t. The secondary text, Artefact 1, “Who Decides Human Futures? An Open Letter to Future Humans of Graybor and Fellow Humans on Other Worlds” imagines what would happen if human reproduction was entirely technological and controlled by an automated system. It incorporates our contemporary fears about generative artificial intelligence’s (AI) power, and particularly, the human biases these programs replicate, and are even learning from.
Stylistically, “Who Decides Human Futures?” is reminiscent of Emile Zola’s J’Accuse…! newspaper exposé from 1898 that described the so-called Dreyfus Affair (published in L’Aurore, a socialist literary newspaper). This military cover-up accused French Army Captain Alfred Dreyfus, who was Jewish, of supplying sensitive documents to the Germans. Dreyfus was convicted of treason in 1894 based on spurious evidence and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil’s Island penal colony in French Guiana.6 Zola’s open letter shed light on the irregularities of the closed court case, suggesting Dreyfus was merely a scapegoat. This is one of my favourite pieces of writing by a public intellectual. “Who Decides Human Futures?” is a deliberate pastiche, incorporating some of Zola’s grandiose language in an attempt to capture the moral outrage when one exposes a cover-up. The espoused goal of Artefact 1, the open letter by the colonists of Graybor who reveal an AI’s control over their reproductive technologies, is similar to Zola’s: to alert the general public to a gross miscarriage of justice perpetrated by those in power, including machines, over unsuspecting citizens.
Importantly, Artefact 1 does not condemn the use of reproductive technology that the Graybor colonists practice, but the AI’s threat of censorship. In the narrative, the writers indicate that artificial wombs are successful in gestating healthy offspring. Some may see a benefit to being able to use this technology to support human off-world migration or gestate offspring longer than the nine-month restriction currently imposed by the limits of bipedal anatomy. The problem is how this technology has been co-opted by a powerful and adapting system, the generative AI.
Artefact 1 follows a theme in science fiction: conflating the negative appropriation of a technology with fundamental elements of the technology itself. In Aldous Huxley’s dystopian classic Brave New World (1932), for example, ectogenesis is used in service of a totalitarian regime. The true dystopian element in the novel is the classical conditioning of all humans to fulfill their predetermined roles in society. However, when the text is invoked in bioethics literature and by the media, it is often to narrowly discuss reproductive biotechnologies. Critics often invoke Brave New World to support a techno-conservative vision of human reproduction—that relies on the physical, psychological, social, and economic exploitation of women’s bodies for the good of the species. Whenever an advancement toward artificial gestation is announced, at least some of the media releases about it include quotations from Huxley’s novel, or title their articles “Brave New World.” This is also true of ethico-legal scholarship, see physician Leon Kass’ famous text, “Preventing a Brave New World” (2001).
The irony of such use is that the artificial wombs depicted in Brave New World are not the true “novum” of the text, as legendary sci-fi literature scholar Darko Suvin would put it. For Suvin, the novum—a plausible but unfamiliar technology, world, system, society, being, etc.—had to be central to the text, something that set the fictional world apart from the world the reader knows, but that must be “validated by cognitive logic” (e.g., cannot be the result of magic or myth).7 A science fiction story cannot be sustained without a novum. In Brave New World, however, the socio-political thought experiment could stand without the use of artificial wombs. The text is not about technology so much as politics, yet it has come to be used as a warning against embracing emerging biotechnologies. When the text is misappropriated in this way, what is a thoughtful exploration of political issues becomes a simplistic technophobic cautionary tale.
Just as in Brave New World, the AI in Artefact 1 uses ectogenesis to allegedly facilitate population control. (In this case through genetic trait selection, as indicated in the final lines of the text). However, ectogenesis was not a core requirement to achieve this ulterior goal. What is core is an entity’s—humans, machines, institutions—capability to censor history and control education and language. With the rise of generative AI today, this is a real concern. Because such technologies are increasingly used in healthcare, as virtual assistants, as research aides (e.g., LLMs), etc., we must consider the risks and benefits of each use case in isolation, and in conjunction with other technologies. Artefact 1 plays with the ambiguous relationship between automated functioning and human intervention we are currently experiencing with new AI tools—ones that may, one day, be part of reproductive technologies as imagined in my contribution. By considering ethical issues in health technologies before they become standard practice, we can more carefully analyse how new technologies are used and ensure their potential is realised, while also protecting the vulnerable from harm.