So basically you admit that humans are currently an enormous success according to inclusive fitness, but at some point this will change—because in the future everyone will upload and humanity will go extinct
Not quite—I take issue with the certainty of the word “will” and with the “because” clause in your quote. I would reword your statement the following way:
“Humans are currently an enormous success according to inclusive fitness, but at some point this may change, due to any number of possible reasons which all stem from the fact that humans do not explicitly care about / optimize for our genes”
Uploading is one example of how humans could become misaligned with genetic fitness, but there are plenty of other ways too. We could get really good at genetic engineering and massively reshape the human genome, leaving only very little of Evolution’s original design. Or we could accidentally introduce a technology that causes all humans to go extinct (nuclear war, AI, engineered pandemic).
(Side note: The whole point of being worried about misalignment is that it’s hard to tell in advance exactly how the misalignment is going to manifest. If you knew in advance how it was going to manifest, you could just add a quick fix onto your agent’s utility function, e.g. “and by the way also assign very low utility to uploading”. But I don’t think a quick fix like this is actually very helpful, because as long as the system is not explicitly optimizing for what you want it to, it’s always possible to find other ways the system’s behavior might not be what you want)
My point is that I’m not confident that humans will always be aligned with genetic fitness. So far, giving humans intelligence has seemed like Evolution’s greatest idea yet. If we were explicitly using our intelligence to maximize our genes’ prevalence, then that would probably always remain true. But instead we do things like create weapons arsenals that actually pose a significant risk to the continued existence of our genes. This is not what a well-aligned intelligence that is robust to future capability gains looks like.
humans do not explicitly care about / optimize for our genes
Ahh but they do. Humans generally do explicitly care about propagating their own progeny/bloodlines, and always have—long before the word ‘gene’. And this is still generally true today—adoption is last resort, not a first choice.
I’ll definitely agree that most people seem to prefer having their own kids to adopting kids. But is this really demonstrating an intrinsic desire to preserve our actual physical genes, or is it more just a generic desire to “feel like your kids are really yours”?
I think we can distinguish between these cases with a thought experiment: Imagine that genetic engineering techniques become available that give high IQs, strength, height, etc., and that prevent most genetic diseases. But, in order to implement these techniques, lots and lots of genes must be modified. Would parents want to use these techniques?
I myself certainly would, even though I am one of the people who would prefer to have my own kids vs adoption. For me, it seems that the genes themselves are not actually the reason I want my own kids. As long as I feel like the kids are “something I created”, or “really mine”, that’s enough to satisfy my natural tendencies. I suspect that most parents would feel similarly.
More specifically, I think what parents care about is that their kids kind of look like them, share some of their personality traits, “have their mother’s eyes”, etc. But I don’t think that anyone really cares how those things are implemented.
Not quite—I take issue with the certainty of the word “will” and with the “because” clause in your quote. I would reword your statement the following way:
“Humans are currently an enormous success according to inclusive fitness, but at some point this may change, due to any number of possible reasons which all stem from the fact that humans do not explicitly care about / optimize for our genes”
Uploading is one example of how humans could become misaligned with genetic fitness, but there are plenty of other ways too. We could get really good at genetic engineering and massively reshape the human genome, leaving only very little of Evolution’s original design. Or we could accidentally introduce a technology that causes all humans to go extinct (nuclear war, AI, engineered pandemic).
(Side note: The whole point of being worried about misalignment is that it’s hard to tell in advance exactly how the misalignment is going to manifest. If you knew in advance how it was going to manifest, you could just add a quick fix onto your agent’s utility function, e.g. “and by the way also assign very low utility to uploading”. But I don’t think a quick fix like this is actually very helpful, because as long as the system is not explicitly optimizing for what you want it to, it’s always possible to find other ways the system’s behavior might not be what you want)
My point is that I’m not confident that humans will always be aligned with genetic fitness. So far, giving humans intelligence has seemed like Evolution’s greatest idea yet. If we were explicitly using our intelligence to maximize our genes’ prevalence, then that would probably always remain true. But instead we do things like create weapons arsenals that actually pose a significant risk to the continued existence of our genes. This is not what a well-aligned intelligence that is robust to future capability gains looks like.
Ahh but they do. Humans generally do explicitly care about propagating their own progeny/bloodlines, and always have—long before the word ‘gene’. And this is still generally true today—adoption is last resort, not a first choice.
I’ll definitely agree that most people seem to prefer having their own kids to adopting kids. But is this really demonstrating an intrinsic desire to preserve our actual physical genes, or is it more just a generic desire to “feel like your kids are really yours”?
I think we can distinguish between these cases with a thought experiment: Imagine that genetic engineering techniques become available that give high IQs, strength, height, etc., and that prevent most genetic diseases. But, in order to implement these techniques, lots and lots of genes must be modified. Would parents want to use these techniques?
I myself certainly would, even though I am one of the people who would prefer to have my own kids vs adoption. For me, it seems that the genes themselves are not actually the reason I want my own kids. As long as I feel like the kids are “something I created”, or “really mine”, that’s enough to satisfy my natural tendencies. I suspect that most parents would feel similarly.
More specifically, I think what parents care about is that their kids kind of look like them, share some of their personality traits, “have their mother’s eyes”, etc. But I don’t think that anyone really cares how those things are implemented.