It seems to me that the project of transhumanism in general is actually the project of creating artificial utility monsters. If we consider a utility monster a creature that can transmute resources into results more efficiently that’s essentially what a transhuman is.
In a world where all humans have severe cognitive and physical disabilities and die at the age of 30 a baseline human would be a utility monster. They would be able to achieve far more of their life goals and desires than all other humans would. Similarly, a transhuman with superhuman cognitive abilities, physical abilities, and indefinite lifespan would be a utility monster from the point of view of modern people.
So to answer the opening question about whether or not effective altruists have ever considered building artificial utility monsters: Any effective altruist who has donated any money to the SIAI, FHI, or other organization has already started doing this. We’ve been working towards creating artificial utility monsters for decade now.
Now, you might have been meaning something slightly different than that. Maybe you meant to create some creature with an inhuman psychology, like orgasmium. To answer that question I’d have to delve deeper and more personally into my understanding of ethics.
Long story short, I think that would be a terrible idea. My population ethics only considers the creation of entities with complex values that somewhat resemble human ones to be positive. For all other types of creatures I am a negative preference utilitarian, I consider their addition to be a bad thing and that we should make sacrifices to prevent it. And that’s even assuming that it is possible to compare their utility functions with ours. I don’t think interpersonal utility comparison between two human-like creatures is hard at all. But a creature with a totally alien set of values is likely impossible.
It seems to me that the project of transhumanism in general is actually the project of creating artificial utility monsters. If we consider a utility monster a creature that can transmute resources into results more efficiently that’s essentially what a transhuman is.
In a world where all humans have severe cognitive and physical disabilities and die at the age of 30 a baseline human would be a utility monster. They would be able to achieve far more of their life goals and desires than all other humans would. Similarly, a transhuman with superhuman cognitive abilities, physical abilities, and indefinite lifespan would be a utility monster from the point of view of modern people.
So to answer the opening question about whether or not effective altruists have ever considered building artificial utility monsters: Any effective altruist who has donated any money to the SIAI, FHI, or other organization has already started doing this. We’ve been working towards creating artificial utility monsters for decade now.
Now, you might have been meaning something slightly different than that. Maybe you meant to create some creature with an inhuman psychology, like orgasmium. To answer that question I’d have to delve deeper and more personally into my understanding of ethics.
Long story short, I think that would be a terrible idea. My population ethics only considers the creation of entities with complex values that somewhat resemble human ones to be positive. For all other types of creatures I am a negative preference utilitarian, I consider their addition to be a bad thing and that we should make sacrifices to prevent it. And that’s even assuming that it is possible to compare their utility functions with ours. I don’t think interpersonal utility comparison between two human-like creatures is hard at all. But a creature with a totally alien set of values is likely impossible.