Scientists are on the verge of breaking the carbon barrier — creating artificial life and changing forever what it means to be human. And we’re not ready, predicts materials scientist Alan H. Goldstein.

He predicts, and warns about, the coming elimination of the barrier between living and nonliving materials with the emergence of “animats” (living materials) — nanobiotechnology devices that can survive and function inside human beings, derive energy from biological metabolism, and copy themselves by molecular self-assembly.

When that moment happens in the near future, it very likely may be beyond our control: “A nanobiotechnology device that is smart enough to circulate through the body hunting viruses or cancer cells is, by definition, smart enough to exchange information with that human body. This means, under the right conditions, the ‘device’ could evolve beyond its original function.”

He has formulated the three Laws of Nanobotics:

1. The fusion of nanotechnology and biotechnology, now called nanobiotechnology, will result in the complete elimination of the barrier between living and nonliving materials.

2. It is not possible to ensure that devices created using the techniques of nanobiotechnology will only transmit molecular information to the target system.

3. The carbon barrier will be eliminated when humans create the first synthetic molecular device capable of changing the state of a living system via direct, intentional transfer of specific chemical information from one to the other.