Scientists Hold Secret Meeting to Consider Creating a Synthetic Human Genome
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
* One thing that can stop them is the law; it could be made illegal, which does stop a lot of behavior. International treaties often work too.
* Also, if it's considered out-of-bounds by the scientific community then it could ruin the scientists' career; that's probably not a risk that a talented scientist with a promising career would take. They couldn't even publish a paper, publish in arXiv, get feedback on their work, or participate in any online discussion. They couldn't go to a conference (there wouldn't be one in their field) or even tell anyone what they are working on. What a life to choose.
* Significant progress likely requires more resources than could be mustered covertly, including financial, technological (where do you buy equipment and supplies?), and especially labor: Not only do they need talented PhD students and postdocs, but progress in most fields requires a whole community of scientists who build on each other's work, not one who discovers it all themself.
<rant>
There is potential for achieving superhuman intelligence by genetic selection. By scanning millions of people's DNA and their personal traits (predicting phenotype characteristics from genotype), they want to build a classifier that would rate a DNA before it got developed. Then they would be able to select embryos before IVF. This is done today too, but only to filter out some simple genetic defects.
A selection of 1:2 gives a 5 IQ point boost. A selection of 1:1000 embryos gives a boost of 40 IQ points. If we repeat this over a few generations, humanity will evolve much faster.
This iterative improvement by AI rating of genomes could be sped up by creating sperm and ova directly from embryo stem cells. This way we don't need to wait for a generation to pass to have the kids become parents. In a few years many DNA selection -> embryo iterations could be tested and selected and evolution would be sped up even more.
In the short run, 40 to 80 years, we face the appearance of AGI and human-computer interfaces. We will evolve together with it, and this kind of DNA synthesis would be an essential tool for the future. Even if a few people have been enhanced, when they have kids with non-enhanced people the new genetic advancements could be passed to the whole population in a few generations. The final aim is to extend life, intelligence and perhaps gain immortality and become much more than we were before.
Even if we don't do AI based DNA enhancement, we still need to prepare for the possible catastrophe at the point of singularity. We need to create databases of human embryos so we could create humanity back in case it is destroyed. I'd also put in these databases a copy of all the human produced data and culture, just in case they need to start from scratch. These databases would have to be hidden and remain incommunicado for long enough to make sure we didn't get wiped out. They could even be cared for by robots for millions of years before opening up, as an insurance ticket that we survive.
</rant>
My point is that we don't really control the evolution of these technologies. They will be developed because they can be developed. In the past they weren't developed because it was impossible. We, humans, created even the a-bomb immediately after we understood nuclear physics. We spied on people as soon as the internet (and even telephone) was available. Why would we be able to stop from making synthetic DNA? The temptation to prolong life or to enhance future children exists, the means also exist.
I know it's a popular theory but I don't know that it stands up to scrutiny. Nuclear weapons technology hasn't advanced in many years, for example; the few who could do the R&D don't seem interested. Technologies involving cannibis and LSD have not advanced in large part, AFAICT, because they are illegal. How do you overcome those and other obstacles I raised above? Another: Powerful interests freeze development in many industries.
Here's another way of thinking of it, more theoretically: There are an effectively infinite number of technologies that could be developed; only a few are chosen. Almost all tech is ignored.
I think that calling it inevitable is a way to duck difficult questions and obligations, similar to the way that some blame the free market and self-interest for their choices (as if those are gods who forced the mortal's hands).
1. You can sense atomic weapons materials at a distance.
2. It takes significant capital equipment to make atomic weapons.
3. It takes precision equipment to make atomic weapons.
4. While theoretical knowledge of atomic weapons is readily disseminated, it is easy to find and target experienced experts in the making of atomic weapons.
I can't find corresponding "choke points" that could control genomics, even on the scale of a synthetic human genome.
You don't need to create sperm or ova to create a genome. That's adding layers of indirection. Bostrom/Sandberg should study biology instead of handwaving like that. It's much faster to forego some of those steps completely. They are so busy being excited about "you don't need to wait an entire generation" that they don't realize "you don't need a sperm nor ova to rate a genome".
You'd have to find a country that cares about blue-sky health research and not bioethics, which sounds tricky. Despite the hype, this sort of technology wouldn't have any useful immediate applications- even if we could make a human with a complete custom genome, we don't have a good idea a what genes to give him/her in order to produce useful qualities like intelligence, strength, etc.
That would leave lots of time for non-biological AI to catch up.
As point of comparison, consider how well any of us would understand software engineering if it cost thousands of dollars to compile a program. That is the potential impact of this technology- talk about using this to create super-humans or whatever is pure hype and/or scaremongering.
Truly a terrifying possibility.
Just like GMO doesn't mean bad (I eat organic food by the way), a lot of this goes to intent. If science wants to push us forward and make us better. I'm all for it. If they want to engineer us to be resistant to industrial chemicals or pollution so that companies can pollute more, or make super soldiers that is when you have to be terrified . Not just because we have something artificial.
I'm scared of being replaced. I'm also worried such humans would be so different than us, they wouldn't identify with us. Maybe even come to despise us. They would form their own ingroup and view us as enemies even.
I've met someone that had high IQ, and identified with high IQ like some people identify with their country. He legitimately hated low IQ people, was ok with exterminating them, and said he would prefer to die or commit suicide than lose his intelligence. It was such an alien way of looking at the world to me.
You're on Hacker News and you're afraid of nerds? Come on. We're right here. Ask us what we think of you.
>I've met someone that had high IQ, and identified with high IQ like some people identify with their country. He legitimately hated low IQ people, was ok with exterminating them, and said he would prefer to die or commit suicide than lose his intelligence. It was such an alien way of looking at the world to me.
To be honest, he probably went through a lot of pain and maltreatment to acquire that kind of point-of-view. He's not an alien! He's a person. Just because his cognition has less noise in it and he needs fewer samples to reach the same inferences doesn't make him some fundamentally different kind of creature: all the algorithms are the same, only their free parameters are different.
Smart people have empathy and feelings too, and in fact, most of the time the most genuinely hurtful thing we experience (speaking as someone who is too often told that he's the "smart guy" in the group, even among nerdy, intelligent people) is precisely the Straw Vulcan stereotype about intelligence. We're not cold-hearted, we're not aliens, we're just people. Putting us in gifted programs as kids is a great idea. Forcing us to compose prodigal concertos at age 12 is probably a bad idea. Treating us with respect and fellowship works best.
What happened to this guy I was talking about, was high IQ defined his identity, what separated him from others. Fortunately most high IQ people do integrate fine into society, we all still have a lot on common.
But it's likely the superintelligent babies would not integrate well. They would only be able to communicate and find things in common with other supers, and not idenitfy with us normies. We'd be subhumans to them.
The day we're able to make batman a reality someone will also make The Joker a reality.
While some might think, "oh well they would just guide us on how to treat Earth better and we all gonna live happily ever after", I would rather bet there would be no good reason for such investment on their part; you don't invest time and energy into training monkeys not to leave the Zoo perimeter; you just put high fences and plug them to electricity.
Honestly, and selfishly, the better race of human is just that - a better version of humans. Sadly I personally would accept their superiority.
It's not as if you'd have a choice in the matter, any more than neanderthals had a choice when we came along.
By that same logic, there are 0.0001 or 10000. Its completely baseless.
So a 1,000 IQ would mean that the probability someone had been naturally born before of equal or greater intelligence would be more than 1 in a trillion trillion trillion...
This is possible because genes are mixed up randomly every generation. The probability of getting the exact optimal combination of genes, out of a thousand genes which affect intelligence, is like flipping a coin and getting heads a thousand times in a row. It will never happen unless you intelligently select every gene artificially, intentionally place every coin down on heads.
But that's irrelevant to this. Because we are dealing with the actual genes that determine intelligence, we can estimate the exact distribution of intelligence, and predict where a set of genes would fall on that distribution. See my comment below.
We are like kids playing with loaded machine guns, currently we are working on removing that fiddly thing called a safety.
And we're like how hard can i be, our parent mother nature does it all the time.
Animals and plants physiology is still capable of doing things we're not nearly capable of reproducing in laboratory. Plants and insects production are still used in pharmacology so it seems to me there would be a huge commercial potential for plant and animal organisms made from scratch, just as there is currently for organisms just barely modified.
The human case will always be made difficult by ethicists and other party poopers, anyway.
The participants must have some sense of where the lines are and also respect that the public has a right to make decisions for their own society.
I personally believe that smart people don't feel any need to get privileges of any kind, since they are by definition more capable to attain their goals anyway. You may not give a dog lots of rights, but you don't see it as a threat or a competitor either.
And nothing will stop them from pursuing political and business careers at equal terms with the rest of us. Of course, their superior genes will let them get ahead, but regardless, that's what already is happening - more genetically smart and charismatic people can get into positions of power easier than others, and we seem to be quite OK with it.
I shudder to think how a greatly magnified version of that will turn out.