I am saying an army of people only as good as me—top quintile—can and will create TAI decades before genetic engineering will matter.
Yes, this is a concern for the utility of this approach. If TAI is created before 2050, none of this work will matter much because none of the unusually intelligent people we’ve been able to create will have had time to make meaningful contributions to the field of AI. In that sense, research in this field is a gamble that only starts paying off if AI takes until at least 2050. Genetic engineering will have a progressively larger impact the longer it takes to develop TAI.
This timing concern was actually one of my chief worries about going into genetics as a career. I won’t be able to switch careers and start having a large impact on AI if research in that field progresses faster than expected. So it’s possible there will come a point in the future where I am stuck on the sidelines in the final years before TAI is created, watching 30 years of work come to nothing.
But I think 50% odds of having a huge impact are worth taking, and I think the biological route to superintelligence is severely neglected right now. Who is actually working on genetic engineering right now? I literally know one person who has both expressed an interest in genetic engineering for intelligence and has real scientific expertise in the field: Steven Hsu. And sadly he seems to have turned away from his earlier goals after his public humiliation at the hands of misguided student activists at Michigan State University.
I am hopeful that as pre-implantation genetic screening via IVF becomes a more normalized part of the pregnancy process, attitudes will change. It’s pretty silly that so many people think enhancing our children’s potential via physical exercise and healthy food is acceptable but that genetic intervention should be off-limits.
Oh. The reason you shouldn’t go into genetics as a career is you will not be permitted to do anything on humans until after we have TAI. Your career will just be wasted. You should work on AI unless you are already in a PhD program.
There are countless legal and structural barriers in the way.
Can’t do it without enough power to overthrow a western government. Only thing that could even theoretically do that would be a TAI fighting on your side...
There are at least two companies in the US alone already doing pre-implantation screening for polygenic disease risk right now, and one of them is offering screening for unusually low IQ already. It’s not that big of a stretch to imagine that parents will want to actively screen for IQ or other important traits in the next decade.
There are no legal barriers to embryo selection for intelligence. There may be some put up at some point in the future (which is a source of worry for me), but the current barriers are technological, not legal.
There was a survey done in Singapore and 87% of parents said they would be willing to intervene genetically to make their children smarter if the option was available. Attitudes in Korea are similar. If worse comes to worse I’ll just work for a company or in a lab somewhere that hasn’t banned it.
Yes, this is a concern for the utility of this approach. If TAI is created before 2050, none of this work will matter much because none of the unusually intelligent people we’ve been able to create will have had time to make meaningful contributions to the field of AI. In that sense, research in this field is a gamble that only starts paying off if AI takes until at least 2050. Genetic engineering will have a progressively larger impact the longer it takes to develop TAI.
This timing concern was actually one of my chief worries about going into genetics as a career. I won’t be able to switch careers and start having a large impact on AI if research in that field progresses faster than expected. So it’s possible there will come a point in the future where I am stuck on the sidelines in the final years before TAI is created, watching 30 years of work come to nothing.
But I think 50% odds of having a huge impact are worth taking, and I think the biological route to superintelligence is severely neglected right now. Who is actually working on genetic engineering right now? I literally know one person who has both expressed an interest in genetic engineering for intelligence and has real scientific expertise in the field: Steven Hsu. And sadly he seems to have turned away from his earlier goals after his public humiliation at the hands of misguided student activists at Michigan State University.
I am hopeful that as pre-implantation genetic screening via IVF becomes a more normalized part of the pregnancy process, attitudes will change. It’s pretty silly that so many people think enhancing our children’s potential via physical exercise and healthy food is acceptable but that genetic intervention should be off-limits.
Oh. The reason you shouldn’t go into genetics as a career is you will not be permitted to do anything on humans until after we have TAI. Your career will just be wasted. You should work on AI unless you are already in a PhD program.
There are countless legal and structural barriers in the way.
The effective altruist case for regime change??
Can’t do it without enough power to overthrow a western government. Only thing that could even theoretically do that would be a TAI fighting on your side...
There are at least two companies in the US alone already doing pre-implantation screening for polygenic disease risk right now, and one of them is offering screening for unusually low IQ already. It’s not that big of a stretch to imagine that parents will want to actively screen for IQ or other important traits in the next decade.
There are no legal barriers to embryo selection for intelligence. There may be some put up at some point in the future (which is a source of worry for me), but the current barriers are technological, not legal.
There was a survey done in Singapore and 87% of parents said they would be willing to intervene genetically to make their children smarter if the option was available. Attitudes in Korea are similar. If worse comes to worse I’ll just work for a company or in a lab somewhere that hasn’t banned it.
Embryo selection is a weak form of genetic engineering though, literally just restricting certain rolls from a die.
This is not how you get someone with a 1000 iq, its how you make 130 iq more common.