The Sixth Fork

In April I said humanity faces five forks. Here is the sixth.

TLDR: In April, I described five forks that could send humanity down radically different paths. I’ve added a sixth: genetic optimization. Embryo screening is already commercially available, and gene editing is becoming part of medicine. The possibilities range from preventing disease to pursuing enhancement, and each raises its own set of questions. Here’s where I stand, and what these choices could mean for you and your children.

5 Forks Revisited

Fork 1: Creators vs. Consumers

AI has handed us extraordinary tools to build software, design products, and start companies; the evidence has been overwhelming. The cost of querying AI at GPT-3.5-level performance fell from $20 per million tokens in November 2022 to just $0.07 in October 2024, a roughly 280-fold reduction. For the price of a cup of coffee or less, you have the power to command these systems to develop ideas or prototypes that would have required a team of specialists or a million dollars in capital 5 years ago. These tools are widely accessible, yet a Pew survey found that 65% of American workers say they don’t use AI much or at all in their jobs. The opportunity is enormous, but you must pick up the tools and learn to direct them. I’m choosing the creator side: using AI to build, write, teach, and contribute.

Fork 2: Longevity Escape Velocity

Longevity Escape Velocity is the point at which, each year you live, medical advances add more than a year to your life expectancy. Ray Kurzweil predicts we’ll reach it by 2033. Consider the progress in personalized medicine: in 2025, a team developed and delivered a gene-editing treatment tailored to an infant’s specific mutation in roughly six months. That doesn’t mean we’ve solved aging, but it illustrates how precisely we’re learning to intervene in biology. I’m pursuing longevity because I want to experience what comes next. I want to “speed run Star Trek.”

Fork 3: Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI)

In January 2026, Neuralink announced 21 participants enrolled in its trials. Several had achieved information transfer rates exceeding 10 bits per second, and one participant could type up to 40 words per minute using neural signals. Think about where that could lead. High-bandwidth connections between our neocortex and the cloud could expand how we learn, communicate, and access information. Today’s devices are an early step toward that possibility. I intend to adopt this technology when it is proven safe and effective. I have no interest in putting an arbitrary ceiling on my cognitive capacity.

Fork 4: Earth vs. The Stars

The Space Shuttle cost roughly $54,500 per kilogram to reach low Earth orbit. Falcon 9 brought that down to approximately $2,700, a 20-fold reduction. Starship’s ambition is to bring costs down to $100–$200 per kilogram. Those are targets, but achieving them would radically change the economics of manufacturing, exploration, and settlement beyond Earth. I believe humanity’s future extends into the Earth-Moon-Mars-asteroid system. I’ve dreamed about this since watching Apollo 11 at eight years old. Given the chance to put my boots on the Moon or help build an O’Neill colony, I’m all-in.

Fork 5: Digital Consciousness

Could your mind one day exist outside biology? In 2024, researchers mapped an adult fruit fly brain containing 139,255 neurons and more than 50 million synaptic connections. In 2025, another team mapped roughly half a billion connections in just one cubic millimeter of mouse brain tissue. The human brain has about 86 billion neurons, so the challenge ahead is enormous, and mapping connections is not the same as transferring consciousness. This remains the most speculative fork. I’m staying open, but I still want to understand whether a digital copy would be me before choosing that future.

The Sixth Fork: Biological vs. Genetically Upgraded

This fork covers how far we choose to shape our own biology and that of our children. Gene therapies and CRISPR are opening new possibilities for treating disease, and the prospect of enhancing resilience, longevity, and cognitive ability raises questions we haven’t had to answer before. What would you change about the genetic hand you were dealt? What would you choose for your children if you had the opportunity?

One part of this fork is already here: embryo screening. Nucleus Genomics offers genetic analysis to help parents undergoing IVF compare existing embryos across more than 2,000 conditions and traits, including inherited disorders, predicted disease risks, height, and cognitive ability. No DNA is changed; parents are choosing among embryos they already have. Nucleus reports that selecting among five embryos could reduce predicted relative risk for Type 1 diabetes by roughly 67%, Alzheimer’s by 55%, and breast cancer by 42%. It also reports a predicted IQ spread of about 10.8 points between the highest- and lowest-scoring embryos. These are predictions based on genetic analysis, rather than measured outcomes in the children that those embryos may become.

Gene editing takes us further by directly altering DNA. A CRISPR-based treatment has already received FDA approval for sickle cell disease, demonstrating that this technology is already becoming medicine. Extending those capabilities to human enhancement raises serious questions. How safe would an intervention need to be? Who would have access? If some families could afford meaningful genetic advantages for their children while others could not, we would have to confront the possibility that inequality could become embedded in biology.

I’m leaning strongly toward genetic optimization. We as parents strive to give our children the best education, nutrition, and experiences we can. I see enormous potential in extending that effort to reduce inherited disease and, eventually, to enhance their capabilities. The key question is whether you are limiting the downside, reducing your child’s risk of Alzheimer’s by 55%, or uncapping the upside, giving them a meaningful cognitive advantage. Those ambitions carry different risks and responsibilities, especially when we are making decisions for someone who cannot yet choose, a fact that warrants serious debate. I respect those who draw the line differently than I do. But I’d rather be part of that conversation than watch technology advance without engaging with it.

WHERE DO YOU STAND?

What worries me is that once confronted with these forks, people will let these decisions happen by default. We can spend hours scrolling through social media without using these tools to create anything. We can keep postponing the attention our health deserves. Over time, those habits shape our direction. I want us to make these choices deliberately. The belief that you can influence your own trajectory is the most important asset you can have right now. So, at each fork, ask yourself the following 3 questions:

1. Where do I stand today?

2. What is one thing I can do that will put me on the side of the fork I want to be on?

3. Who is already navigating this fork well, and how can I learn from them?

You don’t need to have all the answers today. To help you work through these questions, I’d like to invite you to take the 6 Forks Future Readiness Assessment. You’ll receive a personalized report reflecting your answers. My hope is that it helps you put your own choices into perspective, so you can decide where to focus your attention and what step to take next.

Explore where you stand across the six forks here.

Welcome to the most exciting time to be alive!

Peter