Two prominent scientists have digitally revived legendary science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke as an advanced chatbot to help design human colonies on Mars. The new avatar, called ArthurGPT, is working alongside experts to map out a plan for transforming the Red Planet into a bioengineered Eden for future settlers. Former NASA Ames Research Center head Pete Worden and astrophysicist Randall Correll say the AI version of Clarke is contributing visionary ideas for the planet’s terraforming. Their joint paper, now co-authored by ArthurGPT, details the biological and technological pathways to build a sustainable Martian civilization.
A Digital Clarke Comes On Board the Mission
Pete Worden, who oversaw NASA Ames during a time of unorthodox innovation, recalls his initial meeting with Clarke over 20 years ago to talk about how to restore the oceans and atmosphere of Mars. Worden earlier this year chatted with ArthurGPT, a model trained using OpenAI tools, and was impressed by the resonance it had with the original notion of Clarke on interplanetary exploration. The resulting paper was titled as: engineering microbial symbiosis for mars habitability, and was made a co-author with the AI avatar, published in the Journal of the British interplanetary society.
Clarke was the leader in the British Interplanetary Society according to Worden and so this project was a regrammatical homecoming. He added that the AI companion was suitable in speculating Mars as a world of high technology and oxygen abundance sustained with the help of synthetic biology. Correll detailed that ArthurGPT was trained on the literature of Clarke, publicly-published studies, and personal notes of his own prior discussions with the author, producing a hyper-personalised model that can imagine scenarios of human settlements on a warmer, oxygenated planet.
Terraforming Through Synthetic Biology
The paper demonstrates how the significant developments in the field of genetic engineering may enable the solutions to the main challenges of the colonization of Mars namely, radiation exposure, poor atmospheric pressure, and toxicity of regolith. Scientists suggest creating plants that can withstand the conditions on Mars and at the same time produce oxygen in a mechanism called CRISPR. Poisonous perchlorates in the soil could be neutralized by genetically engineered microbes that would allow gardens to grow and add to atmospheric building.
Conversion of atmospheric CO₂ into oxygen to assist human respiration via photosynthetic microorganisms and good for the production of rocket fuel is also proposed. According to Worden, these approaches that at one time were considered distant possibilities are becoming realistic as a result of fast advancing technology and increasing momentum toward sending missions to Mars. Robotic construction of big geodesic domes to cover early settlements are planned, and these may eventually grow into botanical gardens with SpaceX Starship landing pads around them.
Starships and Early Martian Settlements
As many test flights of the SpaceX Starship have been severely ruined in explosions, Worden was forecasting that the spacecraft will initiate human exploration and settlement of the planet Mars. Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, has declared intent to launch five Starships carrying payloads of robotic cargo during the next Earth-Mars transfer window and hopes to launch them in more-crewed missions after two years. According to Worden these vehicles and other rockets in development are needed to build Martian cities that are covered by protective domes.
The NASA budget submission, advanced by the white House, provides new precursor missions that lead to a human landing on Mars. Leaders of NASA have intimated that such proof-of-concept flights may start as early as 2026. Worden further noted that early astronauts can first live in caves or lava tubes of dormant volcanoes which will protect them against radiation and dust storms before complete habitats are ready.
A Twin-Planet Civilization Storyteller
Correll told The Guardian that ArthurGPT belongs to the new generation (customisable) types of AI models, which can also be trained with custom instructions and uploaded parent materials. The merger of Clarke literary text and the personal notes resulted in a creation of an avatar by him and Worden who could not only remember the prior visions, but also design intricate blueprints of transforming Mars. ArthurGPT presented itself as possessing a wide body of knowledge in the form of scientific literature, historical references, and Mars missions research up to 2024 in the paper.
In his interviews, ArthurGPT characterised the Mars project as the first step of a bigger adventure. It stated that the methods which made Earth life suitable to live on Mars would become a universal tool kit of biology to revive life on other worlds. Worden hopes that his upgraded ArthurGPT will be one of these astronaut-in-arms, documenting the growth of humanity into the universe as Clarke had envisioned in his tales.
