Folks at the Singularity Institute have been watching the reproductive biotechnology area for quite a while, e.g. it plays a significant role in the Uncertain Future modeling app. Some relevant points:
Embryo selection technology (which is the only existing way to apply genetic findings on IQ) on its own has limited impact: if you produce a hundred embryos and have a perfect predictive model of intelligence, you could get a boost of perhaps a standard deviation for a typical couple. You can already get this benefit by using donor sperm and eggs, if one is willing to have genetically unrelated kids, and China doesn’t seem to have strongly encouraged doing so. Eggs from elite donor females are also scarce.
It gets much more powerful with the technology for artificial gametes, which let you make numerous embryos, boost the supply of eggs that can be obtained from a given elite donor to meet demand, and have multiple generations in vitro (create many embryos, cultivate artifical gametes from the best combinations, and repeatedly cross them to get what would otherwise take hundreds of years in only one). Artificial gametes are a pretty natural extension of stem cell technology, but people talk about having them in ten years, not the next couple years (when genomics will get to the point of plumbing the genetic architecture of intelligence and other traits conducive to scientific progress).
The expected combination of behavioral genomics and improvements in artificial gametes or genetic engineering technology makes the idea of lasting stagnation or social collapse look less plausible, and concentrates more of the probability mass for AI and WBE in this century than otherwise.
The increase of intelligence relative to other inputs in the scientific process makes it more likely that scientists and developers will see and respond wisely to risks, making it more plausible that AI development will proceed safely.
The effect of smarter political leadership will be attenuated and delayed: it takes time to rise to high positions.
Mass improvements of the electorate/selectorate will be even slower, as it will take a number of decades for enhanced kids to approach a majority, especially given likely limited adoption (even with big subsidies and measures like relaxation of the one-child policy for enhanced kids).
The potential gains from enhancement are much larger for those willing to have children genetically unrelated to them, or regions which encourage this.
Those working to reduce existential risk should shift intellectual effort at the margin to projects that are time-sensitive (e.g. the chance that AI or engineered extinction plagues will be easy to produce sooner than generally thought) and expect future enhanced folk to do more of the cognitive heavy lifting.
Efforts to transmit relevant information and values to young people/the next generation will become more important in the next 20 years or so. Ensuring that enhanced kids are exposed to ideas that encourage them to reduce existential risk as they grow up looks more important. It would be good to have a clear and accessible picture of the risks landscape available by then.
Encouraging somewhat faster and more evenly distributed adoption of the enhancement technologies looks desirable. In Western countries, this means relaxing or avoiding restrictive regulations, spreading pro-enhancement memes, and the development of the personal genomics industry (companies like 23andme or Counsyl).
At any given time, there will be a 15-20 year lag between the ability distribution of enhanced young adults who have begun to contribute to research and economic growth and the distribution of newborns with the very latest enhancements. This looks like something that will boost growth substantially, but the big recursive effects look like they won’t have time to come into play until the second half of the century.
Genomics studies of intelligence may lead to the development of cognitive enhancement drugs on a faster timescale (although testing and approval still takes close to a decade, that’s less than growth to maturity). This is less certain (genetic variation affecting intelligence may mostly be rare idiosyncratic stuff, or only relevant in maturation and early brain development), but could be applied to a much larger population of existing adults, and children born without genetic enhancement.
Complete Genomics originally claimed they would sequence 10,000 genomes in 2010. In the article you linked to, they gave delays in establishing their main sequencing facility as a reason for promising only 5,000 for 2010. According to their wikipedia article, they only wound up sequencing 300 genomes in the third quarter of 2010. The hype in this area is usually one or two years premature (although that’s an amazingly short hype cycle nonetheless!), even with order of magnitude annual growth in sequencing.
Glad to see this is being weighed at SIAI. Some points:
Efforts to transmit relevant information and values to young people/the next generation will become more important in the next 20 years or so. Ensuring that enhanced kids are exposed to ideas that encourage them to reduce existential risk as they grow up looks more important.
If the enhancement is largely in China this seems unlikely. As an up and coming nation they are much less likely to take precaution when making moves to increase their own importance.
Things could be even worse if China adopted a state raised genius program, where they could mold the development of genius children from a young age (increasing their nationalism, for instance. Indeed, nationalism/obedience may be selected for genetically as well).
Encouraging somewhat faster and more evenly distributed adoption of the enhancement technologies looks desirable.
But is it feasible? Would the US ever allow full artificial gametes? Public opinion would be overwhelmingly against it. The only thing that would sway this, I think, would be seeing the full effect in China. Once Chinese children become overwhelmingly more intelligent than Western kids, the pressure to enhance would likely become much more poignant. No one wants to lose.
Such a scenario could leave the West 5 or even 10 years behind the curve. That’s a long time, especially considering this scenario is likely to play out 20 years from now when emerging technologies (AI, WBE, nano) may be on the verge of really taking of.
Those working to reduce existential risk should shift intellectual effort at the margin to projects that are time-sensitive (e.g. the chance that AI or engineered extinction plagues will be easy to produce sooner than generally thought) and expect future enhanced folk to do more of the cognitive heavy lifting.
This is a reasonable strategy: focus on the scenarios where the confounding factor isn’t present. This is limiting though. Other strategies:
If enhanced scientists will be overwhelming Chinese in 20 years, then it makes sense to encourage a strong existential risk reduction atmosphere in China. It also makes sense to encourage as many risk savvy people as possible to get directly involved with Chinese research groups, especially those looking at AI and genetic engineering.
Artificial gametes are a pretty natural extension of stem cell technology, but people talk about having them in ten years, not the next couple years.
I suspect the forces at play here are potentially much more explosive. I think China knows exactly what it’s doing, and has strong political will power to get the job done. Once a genetic study has found a substantial amount of variation responsible for IQ, the pressure will be on to make use of that data. How much faster will research on artificial gametes go if the researchers are very well funded and don’t have any regulatory/ethical oversight?
(Note, also, that it’s possible that the brightest minds in the field will head to China once research begins to take off and it becomes clear the US won’t be taking part.)
Sure they are clever but they mostly seem to cluster in the 120 IQ range for functioning democracies, nearly regardless of the country mean. Also I need to crunch the data but my impression seems to be that some smaller countries tend to have usually smart leaders (Malta, Trinidad) compared to the mean of their countries. I can’t quite think of a major country that shows the same pattern.
However the ruling class of say Quatar or Saudi Arabia might be in for a leap frog.
I’m inclined to doubt that it’s the average of politicians that would make the most immediate impact, actually. Significantly stretching out the right-side tail ought to have practical consequences.
China is now basically run by technocrats—scientists and engineers. (A society run by such is part of many technologists’ fantasies, though I don’t see a massive brain drain to there.)
New Labour in the UK was run by some ridiculously intelligent and erudite people. I was a fan and even I would say they did quite a lot of demonstrating that intelligence means you can do much bigger stupid things.
There are really quite a lot of frighteningly intelligent politicians. I’m not sure just increasing politicians’ IQ will do much at all.
o #4 assumes a strong correlation between the thing being increased by intelligence-boosting biotech and the thing responsible for choosing to mitigate risks.
o #5 and #6 assume that voting, and similarly egalitarian power sources, will be the primary method whereby the intelligence-boosted minority will exert political power. (As opposed to, for example, making tons of money and buying elections outright, or constructing effective propaganda campaigns, or building giant lasers and threatening to write their names on the moon.)
I’d love to read the justifications for those presumptions if they are written down somewhere. (I do realize you can’t include all your reasoning in a blog comment.)
4 is based on the importance of simply noticing and understanding risks, and on data showing that increased intelligence and education are associated with more enthusiasm for public goods.
5 and 6 depend on the timescale, with the earliest enhancements being fairly limited.
Folks at the Singularity Institute have been watching the reproductive biotechnology area for quite a while, e.g. it plays a significant role in the Uncertain Future modeling app. Some relevant points:
Embryo selection technology (which is the only existing way to apply genetic findings on IQ) on its own has limited impact: if you produce a hundred embryos and have a perfect predictive model of intelligence, you could get a boost of perhaps a standard deviation for a typical couple. You can already get this benefit by using donor sperm and eggs, if one is willing to have genetically unrelated kids, and China doesn’t seem to have strongly encouraged doing so. Eggs from elite donor females are also scarce.
It gets much more powerful with the technology for artificial gametes, which let you make numerous embryos, boost the supply of eggs that can be obtained from a given elite donor to meet demand, and have multiple generations in vitro (create many embryos, cultivate artifical gametes from the best combinations, and repeatedly cross them to get what would otherwise take hundreds of years in only one). Artificial gametes are a pretty natural extension of stem cell technology, but people talk about having them in ten years, not the next couple years (when genomics will get to the point of plumbing the genetic architecture of intelligence and other traits conducive to scientific progress).
The expected combination of behavioral genomics and improvements in artificial gametes or genetic engineering technology makes the idea of lasting stagnation or social collapse look less plausible, and concentrates more of the probability mass for AI and WBE in this century than otherwise.
The increase of intelligence relative to other inputs in the scientific process makes it more likely that scientists and developers will see and respond wisely to risks, making it more plausible that AI development will proceed safely.
The effect of smarter political leadership will be attenuated and delayed: it takes time to rise to high positions.
Mass improvements of the electorate/selectorate will be even slower, as it will take a number of decades for enhanced kids to approach a majority, especially given likely limited adoption (even with big subsidies and measures like relaxation of the one-child policy for enhanced kids).
The potential gains from enhancement are much larger for those willing to have children genetically unrelated to them, or regions which encourage this.
Those working to reduce existential risk should shift intellectual effort at the margin to projects that are time-sensitive (e.g. the chance that AI or engineered extinction plagues will be easy to produce sooner than generally thought) and expect future enhanced folk to do more of the cognitive heavy lifting.
Efforts to transmit relevant information and values to young people/the next generation will become more important in the next 20 years or so. Ensuring that enhanced kids are exposed to ideas that encourage them to reduce existential risk as they grow up looks more important. It would be good to have a clear and accessible picture of the risks landscape available by then.
Encouraging somewhat faster and more evenly distributed adoption of the enhancement technologies looks desirable. In Western countries, this means relaxing or avoiding restrictive regulations, spreading pro-enhancement memes, and the development of the personal genomics industry (companies like 23andme or Counsyl).
At any given time, there will be a 15-20 year lag between the ability distribution of enhanced young adults who have begun to contribute to research and economic growth and the distribution of newborns with the very latest enhancements. This looks like something that will boost growth substantially, but the big recursive effects look like they won’t have time to come into play until the second half of the century.
Genomics studies of intelligence may lead to the development of cognitive enhancement drugs on a faster timescale (although testing and approval still takes close to a decade, that’s less than growth to maturity). This is less certain (genetic variation affecting intelligence may mostly be rare idiosyncratic stuff, or only relevant in maturation and early brain development), but could be applied to a much larger population of existing adults, and children born without genetic enhancement.
Complete Genomics originally claimed they would sequence 10,000 genomes in 2010. In the article you linked to, they gave delays in establishing their main sequencing facility as a reason for promising only 5,000 for 2010. According to their wikipedia article, they only wound up sequencing 300 genomes in the third quarter of 2010. The hype in this area is usually one or two years premature (although that’s an amazingly short hype cycle nonetheless!), even with order of magnitude annual growth in sequencing.
Glad to see this is being weighed at SIAI. Some points:
If the enhancement is largely in China this seems unlikely. As an up and coming nation they are much less likely to take precaution when making moves to increase their own importance.
Things could be even worse if China adopted a state raised genius program, where they could mold the development of genius children from a young age (increasing their nationalism, for instance. Indeed, nationalism/obedience may be selected for genetically as well).
But is it feasible? Would the US ever allow full artificial gametes? Public opinion would be overwhelmingly against it. The only thing that would sway this, I think, would be seeing the full effect in China. Once Chinese children become overwhelmingly more intelligent than Western kids, the pressure to enhance would likely become much more poignant. No one wants to lose.
Such a scenario could leave the West 5 or even 10 years behind the curve. That’s a long time, especially considering this scenario is likely to play out 20 years from now when emerging technologies (AI, WBE, nano) may be on the verge of really taking of.
This is a reasonable strategy: focus on the scenarios where the confounding factor isn’t present. This is limiting though. Other strategies:
If enhanced scientists will be overwhelming Chinese in 20 years, then it makes sense to encourage a strong existential risk reduction atmosphere in China. It also makes sense to encourage as many risk savvy people as possible to get directly involved with Chinese research groups, especially those looking at AI and genetic engineering.
I suspect the forces at play here are potentially much more explosive. I think China knows exactly what it’s doing, and has strong political will power to get the job done. Once a genetic study has found a substantial amount of variation responsible for IQ, the pressure will be on to make use of that data. How much faster will research on artificial gametes go if the researchers are very well funded and don’t have any regulatory/ethical oversight?
(Note, also, that it’s possible that the brightest minds in the field will head to China once research begins to take off and it becomes clear the US won’t be taking part.)
I think the average IQ of politicians will not change much for the first few generations after the introduction of GE boosted babies.
Look at CA politicians column in the first table
Sure they are clever but they mostly seem to cluster in the 120 IQ range for functioning democracies, nearly regardless of the country mean. Also I need to crunch the data but my impression seems to be that some smaller countries tend to have usually smart leaders (Malta, Trinidad) compared to the mean of their countries. I can’t quite think of a major country that shows the same pattern.
However the ruling class of say Quatar or Saudi Arabia might be in for a leap frog.
I’m inclined to doubt that it’s the average of politicians that would make the most immediate impact, actually. Significantly stretching out the right-side tail ought to have practical consequences.
China is now basically run by technocrats—scientists and engineers. (A society run by such is part of many technologists’ fantasies, though I don’t see a massive brain drain to there.)
New Labour in the UK was run by some ridiculously intelligent and erudite people. I was a fan and even I would say they did quite a lot of demonstrating that intelligence means you can do much bigger stupid things.
There are really quite a lot of frighteningly intelligent politicians. I’m not sure just increasing politicians’ IQ will do much at all.
Two observations:
o #4 assumes a strong correlation between the thing being increased by intelligence-boosting biotech and the thing responsible for choosing to mitigate risks.
o #5 and #6 assume that voting, and similarly egalitarian power sources, will be the primary method whereby the intelligence-boosted minority will exert political power. (As opposed to, for example, making tons of money and buying elections outright, or constructing effective propaganda campaigns, or building giant lasers and threatening to write their names on the moon.)
I’d love to read the justifications for those presumptions if they are written down somewhere. (I do realize you can’t include all your reasoning in a blog comment.)
4 is based on the importance of simply noticing and understanding risks, and on data showing that increased intelligence and education are associated with more enthusiasm for public goods. 5 and 6 depend on the timescale, with the earliest enhancements being fairly limited.