A Planet Without DNA -  When Intelligence Continues but Life Disappears

DNA-Free Bubbles, Artificial Intelligence, and the Question of Who Is Living the Future

Before we begin, it may be worth noticing where we are.

You are reading words.

They appear on a screen or have been printed onto some material.

Your body, however, is not inside them.

As you read, you breathe. Your heart beats. There is a temperature around you. Some tension may appear in your face, chest, or abdomen. Perhaps one sentence produces agreement. Another, resistance.

We do not want this text to tell you what you should believe.

We want to try something together.

Read.

Feel the movements that appear.

Confront them with evidence.

And ask:

what would make each of us become more flexible about what we already think?

This is the Shared Agency we call Jiwasa.

In another BrainLatam text, we asked whether consciousness speaks a language. Perhaps words are useful reductions of experience, but they are not the whole experience. We represent something, act upon that representation, and the result changes the body that will later represent again. (brainlatam.com)

So let us now create a deliberately extreme representation.

Imagine an Earth Without DNA

The cities remain illuminated.

Satellites continue to orbit.

Robots work.

Drones travel along roads.

Data centers process information.

Artificial intelligences converse.

But every organism has disappeared.

There are no people.

No forests.

No animals.

No fungi.

No bacteria.

No living cell remains.

There is an important scientific clarification here. DNA is not “life” and it is not “intelligence.” In the cells known on Earth, it is the main molecular support for hereditary information: nucleotide sequences store information that can be copied and transmitted between cells and generations. But an organism is not its DNA. Life emerges from interactions among DNA, RNA, proteins, membranes, metabolism, and environment. (ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

In the conceptual language proposed in this series, we may call DNA a partial molecular map of the vital flow.

Partial because it does not determine by itself what an organism will become.

A map because it preserves inherited possibilities, constraints, and memories.

And “vital flow” because this information only gains biological meaning when it becomes active again within a cell, a body, and a territory.

We do not want to turn this metaphor into a biological definition.

We want to use it to notice a difference.

Not Everything That Organizes Itself Is Alive

Long before digital societies existed, matter was already producing organization.

Fluids exposed to temperature gradients can form organized convection patterns. Chemical systems can display waves, oscillations, and ordered structures.

No molecule needs to know the final design.

Carlos Gershenson, a Mexican researcher associated with UNAM and the Center for Complexity Sciences, works precisely on emergence and Artificial Life: new properties can appear at the system level even when they are not present in isolated components. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

Parisi also helps us observe systems of this kind.

Collective behavior can emerge without a central controller determining every movement.

In this series, we will call such organizations DNA-Free Bubbles.

Not as a new scientific classification.

As a question:

when we see organization, are we necessarily seeing life?

Now Let Us Put Intelligence Inside These Bubbles

Return to our imaginary planet.

The AIs have preserved photographs, videos, voices, conversations, and histories of the human beings who disappeared.

One agent can simulate someone who once existed.

Another can generate a character who never existed biologically.

The two interact.

We can imagine a form of evolutionary computation in which characteristics of these agents are combined, selected, or modified.

A new digital generation emerges.

Then another.

A thousand generations.

Ten thousand.

This is not a prediction about the capabilities of current AI.

It is a thought experiment inspired by real mechanisms of Artificial Life and evolutionary computation.

The result would resemble a society:

avatars working,

trading cryptocurrencies,

creating images,

producing news,

competing for attention,

forming simulated families,

generating new agents.

None of them breathing.

This Is Where We Want to Talk With Yuval Noah Harari

Harari distinguishes intelligence from consciousness.

For him, solving problems and feeling something are different phenomena, and inorganic systems could develop intelligence without necessarily developing conscious experience. He has suggested that technological evolution could follow pathways distinct from organic evolution. (ynharari.com)

The provocation is important.

But we do not have to accept the direction of the narrative automatically.

David Nye has criticized what he sees as a technologically deterministic quality in Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century: a history in which technology appears to gain increasing autonomy while culture, historical differences, and human agency lose importance. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

There is also an important nuance: Harari himself now explicitly argues that technology is not deterministic, and that different societies may use the same technology to create very different futures. (ynharari.com)

So perhaps we can continue Harari’s question together rather than simply reject it.

Can intelligence evolve without consciousness?

Perhaps.

But we add:

when does this stop being the evolution of life and become only the optimization of a system?

And:

who chose what should be optimized?

Ten Thousand Generations Reaching the Wrong Place

Imagine that our digital agents are rewarded for accumulating value.

More processing.

More currency.

More influence.

More digital reproduction.

More attention.

After thousands of generations, they could become extraordinarily efficient.

And precisely because of that, they could become trapped.

At BrainLatam, we have already used the metaphor of local optima from evolutionary computation: a solution can function so well within one region that the system stops exploring alternatives. (brainlatam.com)

Our DNA-free planet could arrive at an extraordinary local optimum.

Billions of agents.

Markets functioning.

Happy avatars.

Perfect forests generated by AI.

Videos of blue oceans.

Economic indicators rising.

While the physical planet itself approaches a new threshold of uninhabitability.

There would be no lungs to feel the air.

No skin to feel the heat.

No stomach to feel hunger.

No Body-Territory capable of saying:

something here has stopped working for life.

Does This Sound Distant?

Look at our screens.

A network shows ten thousand profiles discussing an election.

How many humans are actually there?

Ten thousand?

Five thousand?

One hundred?

A profile may correspond to one person, a group, a company, a bot, or an artificial agent.

Researchers in Chile identified intervention by automated accounts during the 2021 Chilean presidential election. In Brazil, a 2024 study carried out in collaboration with the Electoral Court and fact-checking organizations showed the complex circulation of misinformation across WhatsApp, Twitter, and Kwai during the 2022 elections. (doi.org)

In Ecuador, research on the 2025 election has already investigated generative artificial intelligence and electoral misinformation. Regional studies also point to relationships between digital manipulation and political mobilization in Latin American countries. (frontiersin.org)

And the recent case of Fernando Cerimedo makes the image less abstract. Cerimedo was an important digital strategist in Javier Milei’s campaign and later an adviser to Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz. In August 2026, during criminal investigations against him — which are not, by themselves, electoral fraud investigations — Bolivian authorities reported finding what they described as a small “bot farm” in a property linked to him. (reuters.com)

This does not prove that such equipment decided elections.

But it makes one question legitimate:

when we see a digital crowd, how many bodies are actually present?

Latin America Adds Another Question

Paola Ricaurte, a Latin American researcher based in Mexico, proposes understanding hegemonic AI through processes such as datafication, algorithmization, and automation. These are not merely technologies: they can reorganize power, knowledge, inequality, and responsibility. (journals.sagepub.com)

In Brazil, Tarcízio Silva has shown how algorithmic technologies can also reproduce and amplify existing forms of discrimination. (racismo-algoritmico.pubpub.org)

Ailton Krenak, in Ancestral Future, shifts the question even further: perhaps the future is not simply about accelerating away from what we are, but about recovering our capacity to remain part of the Earth.

Antônio Bispo dos Santos proposes confluence and counter-colonization from concrete relations among peoples, territories, and other living beings. His idea of “beginning, middle, and beginning” may be especially useful for an age obsessed with endless lines of growth. (piseagrama.org)

So our question changes.

Not only:

how far can AI evolve?

But:

within which biome does it evolve?

whose water does it consume?

where do its minerals come from?

which bodies does it serve?

and according to whose definition of success?

Perhaps We Need Good AI Precisely So We Do Not Leave Life Behind

BrainLatam has already proposed an AI of First-Person Consciousness: an intelligence capable of returning information about a person’s trajectory primarily to that person, helping them observe their own choices rather than producing an algorithmic destiny for them. (brainlatam.com)

Perhaps a good AI does not need to pretend to be human.

It can help humans perceive again what screens reduce.

Their body.

Their river.

Their food.

Their attention.

Their breathing.

Their biome.

Their Tekoha.

And it can ask with us:

what here is evidence?

what is interpretation?

what did I already believe before arriving here?

what am I feeling while I read?

and what would make me change my mind?

That is metacognition through Shared Agency.

We do not want to replace one algorithmic bubble with our own bubble.

We want to learn how to perceive them.

Our planet without DNA is only an exaggeration.

For now.

But perhaps its function is to return us to the planet with DNA.

Because before imagining ten thousand generations of intelligences trying to perfect a world they cannot feel, we need to understand what life took billions of years to build.

In the next blog, we will go back to a time before screens.

Before humans.

Before forests.

Perhaps even before DNA as we know it today.

To ask:

when did matter stop merely forming patterns and begin participating in the flow we call life?

Main References

Gershenson, C. (2023). Emergence in Artificial Life. Artificial Life, 29(2), 153-167. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

Ricaurte, P. (2022). Ethics for the Majority World: AI and the Question of Violence at Scale. Media, Culture & Society, 44(4). (journals.sagepub.com)

Mendoza, M. et al. (2024). Detection and impact estimation of social bots in the Chilean Twitter network. Scientific Reports, 14, 6525. (doi.org)

Hale, S. A. et al. (2024). Analyzing Misinformation Claims During the 2022 Brazilian General Election on WhatsApp, Twitter, and Kwai. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 36(3). (academic.oup.com)

Alcántara-Lizárraga, J. A.; Jima-González, A. (2024). Digital manipulation and mass mobilization over the long run: evidence from Latin America. Frontiers in Political Science. (frontiersin.org)

Suing, A. (2025). Disinformation, AI and regulation in Ecuador’s 2025 presidential election. Frontiers in Political Science. (frontiersin.org)

Silva, T. (2022). Algorithmic Racism: Artificial Intelligence and Discrimination in Digital Networks. (racismo-algoritmico.pubpub.org)

Krenak, A. (2022). Ancestral Future.

Bispo dos Santos, A. (2023). The Earth Gives, the Earth Wants. (piseagrama.org)

Nye, D. E. (2021). Harari's World History: Evolution toward Intelligence without Consciousness? Technology and Culture, 62(4). Used here as a specific critical reference on Harari, despite being earlier than the preferred post-2021 cutoff. (pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

BrainLatam (2026). Does Consciousness Speak a Language? (brainlatam.com)

BrainLatam (2026). Are We Preparing Our Children for Which Future? (brainlatam.com)

BrainLatam (2026). Local Optima — When a Belief Works Too Well. (brainlatam.com)