RE: Dangers of human self-modification

From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Wed May 26 2004 - 06:40:49 MDT


> > I'm not saying that smart humans will necessarily become evil or
> > careless -- in fact I think the opposite is more closely
> true -- but
> > it's clear that it will be hard to predict the ethical inclinations
> > and quality-of-judgment of intelligence-enhanced humans.
> >
> >
>
> Somehow I think this is far less of a risk and less hard to predict
> than the ethical inclinations and quality-of-judgment of sentient or
> insentient SIAIs.
>
> - samantha

Samantha,

I agree that the ethics of enhanced humans will be easier to predict
than the ethics of self-improving AGI's.

However, the ethics of AGI's produced by enhanced humans will not
necessarily be easier to predict than that of those produced by ordinary
humans. That depends on the orientation of the enhanced humans: are
they trying to make more predictable AGI's or are they serving some
other purpose in their AGI design?

What this thread really leads to is the (obvious) conclusion that we'd
be better off to enhance humans for IMPROVED WISDOM before we enhance
them for improved intelligence.

However, this seems fairly unlikely to happen, because wisdom, rather
than intelligence, will be seen as providing less competitive advantage
to the parties pushing for genetic modification of humans.

"Genetically engineering a wiser human" is an excellent transhumanist
project. If I weren't so busy with AGI maybe I'd take it up myself.
Hopefully some of the things I'm doing with bioinformatics at Biomind
will ultimately be useful for this goal ... in the unfortunate
circumstance that we fail to create a benevolent AGI before biotech
advances to the point enabling the creation of wiser OR cleverer humans
by genetic manipulation, that is.

-- Ben



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