Scientists have already identified certain areas in human DNA that seem to control our cognitive functions.In theory, someone’s “smart genes” could be manipulated to work better, an idea that almost certainly has become more feasible with the recent development of CRISPR.“The potential here is really very great,” says Anders Sandberg, a neuroscientist and fellow at Oxford University’s Future of Humanity Institute.“I mean scientists are already working on … small biological robots made up of small particles of DNA that bind to certain things in the brain and change their chemical composition.“This would allow us to do so many different things,” Sandberg adds.“The sky’s the limit.”

In spite of this optimism, some scientists maintain that it will probably be a long time before we can bioengineer a substantially smarter person.For one thing, it is unlikely there are just a few genes or even a few dozen genes that regulate intelligence.Indeed, intelligence may be dependent on the subtle dance of thousands of genes, which makes bioengineering a genius much harder.