So like a couple would decide to have kids and they would just pick a set of genes entirely unrelated to theirs to maximise whatever characteristics they valued?
If I understand it correctly, I still feel like most people would choose not to do this, a lot of people seem against even minor genetic engineering, let alone something as major as that. I do understand a lot of the reticence towards genetic engineering has other sources besides “this wouldn’t feel like my child, it’s hard to make any clear predictions.
Yeah, anthropomorphising evolution is pretty iffy, I guess in this situation I’m imagining we’re evolution and we create a human race with the goal of replicating a bunch of DNA sequences that starts doing all sorts of wild things we didn’t predict. I still think I’d be more pleased with the outcome here than what a lot of current thinking on AGIs predicts we will be once we create a capable enough AGI. We do propagate our little DNA sequences, not as ambitiously as we perhaps could, but also responsibly enough that we aren’t destroying absolutely everything in our path. I don’t see this as a whole-sale reinterpreting of what evolution “wants”, more of a not very zealous approach to achieving it.
A bit like if I made a very capable paper clip making AI and it made only a few million paperclips and then got distracted watching YouTube and only making some paperclips every now and then. Not ideal, but better than annihilation.
So like a couple would decide to have kids and they would just pick a set of genes entirely unrelated to theirs to maximise whatever characteristics they valued?
If I understand it correctly, I still feel like most people would choose not to do this, a lot of people seem against even minor genetic engineering, let alone something as major as that. I do understand a lot of the reticence towards genetic engineering has other sources besides “this wouldn’t feel like my child, it’s hard to make any clear predictions.
Yeah, anthropomorphising evolution is pretty iffy, I guess in this situation I’m imagining we’re evolution and we create a human race with the goal of replicating a bunch of DNA sequences that starts doing all sorts of wild things we didn’t predict. I still think I’d be more pleased with the outcome here than what a lot of current thinking on AGIs predicts we will be once we create a capable enough AGI. We do propagate our little DNA sequences, not as ambitiously as we perhaps could, but also responsibly enough that we aren’t destroying absolutely everything in our path. I don’t see this as a whole-sale reinterpreting of what evolution “wants”, more of a not very zealous approach to achieving it.
A bit like if I made a very capable paper clip making AI and it made only a few million paperclips and then got distracted watching YouTube and only making some paperclips every now and then. Not ideal, but better than annihilation.