---
id: "contrarian-bioengineering-supremacy"
type: "contrarian-insight"
source_timestamps: ["§ Artificial Intelligence Meets Organoid Intelligence"]
tags: ["bioengineering", "post-silicon"]
related: ["claim-bioengineering-gpt", "concept-organoid-intelligence", "concept-generative-biology"]
speakers: ["Amy Webb"]
challenges: "The assumption that the future of computing and technology will remain strictly silicon-based and inorganic."
sources: ["futures"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-futures"
originDay: 2
articleStem: "hbr-foci-73-living-intelligence"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2025/01/why-living-intelligence-is-the-next-big-thing"
sourceTitle: "Why “Living Intelligence” Is the Next Big Thing"
---
# Bioengineering, not silicon AI, is the ultimate general-purpose technology

**Contrarian insight:** In a tech landscape obsessed with silicon chips and GPU clusters, [[entity-amy-webb|Webb]] posits that **bioengineering** — using lab-grown tissues and [[concept-generative-biology|Generative Biology]] to create living machines and biological computers (see [[concept-organoid-intelligence|Organoid Intelligence]]) — could ultimately prove to be the **most important general-purpose technology**, far surpassing traditional computing.

**What it challenges:** The assumption that the future of computing and technology will remain strictly silicon-based and inorganic.

**Related:** the formal claim [[claim-bioengineering-gpt]].

> *Enrichment counter-perspective:* Synthetic biology is advancing quickly, but biological systems are slower, costlier, and more heavily regulated than software. Bioengineering's growing importance does **not** imply near-term broad disruption — the timeline may be much longer than the rhetoric suggests, and organoid computing in particular remains highly experimental.