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.)
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.)