Define "improvement"...
Here lies the crux of the issue
For some people in the past (eg 1939 Germany), or some people now in power in the US, "improvement" might not be defined as you'd like...
Here lies the crux of the issue
For some people in the past (eg 1939 Germany), or some people now in power in the US, "improvement" might not be defined as you'd like...
Also guess what, once we have discovered the "gene to increase IQ" (if that exists)... we will also be able to wilfully build "artificially low IQ" people who will never complain, and never be able to defend themselves because they won't have access to an education... guess who will be interested in being able to create such a big population and will force people to have that free labor workforce...
If history told us one thing, is that we shouldn't play "magicians"
It might be stuff like an increased cultural focus on some genetics being "better" than others. Or an increased genetic divide between the rich and the poor over generations. Or unintended consequences where we make mistakes and cause new diseases or problems for the people that are being genetically modified.
But the chance of governments intervening in this seems low, other than maybe to require people to not select for bad traits or to put more restrictions on this technology (as many have already done).
And the idea of genetically engineering an under-class is equally absurd. Who would buy-in to that? It’s so obviously ethically evil. If we live in free countries with free press, this is just not going to happen.
If it is unintended, then when we notice it happening we will change course. We will see that the specific gene edits had negative effects, and we will avoid those gene edits in the future. The effect size will probably also be a lot lower than if you were specifically aiming to make people as agreeable and authority-following as possible.
Additionally, the people with the gene edits would only make up only a small percentage of all the people in a society. They will get some form of herd immunity when combined with people born naturally, older generations, and people without the gene edit.
This is a dramatically different situation to someone intentionally trying to engineer a servant class.
Artificial selection of slaves has already existed in the US historicially with chattel slavery. It is merely one regime change away
It seems very unlikely that poorer countries with dictators would have the skilled workforce, competence, and resources to pull this off. Perhaps some wealthy authoritarian states like the UAE could do it, but it would still require a massive effort for it to happen. And why bother when they can just import labour instead?
Poor countries can just outsource the task to the first world in the same way they outsource surveilance today. Bred slaves are more subserviant and better workers, 4/5 genetic engineers agree!
Elon Musk is trying very hard to produce robots and failing... imagine if it had access to a tech that solved all the hard problems, like making senses that work, vision, smell, etc... just keeping those beings "dumb enough" that they obey order... what if... we could just use humans and re-engineer them to obey...
"free countries with free press" haha. The guy bought the US election ("the #1 democracy in the world") for $250M
It just doesn't make sense. It is much cheaper and easier to just pay already-living people to work for you, instead of waiting decades and spending millions of dollars genetically engineering and raising each person, just in the hope that they then decide to work for you. That's just ridiculous.
The appeal of robotics is that the robots cost $30,000, you can build them on an assembly line, and they do not have emotions so will happily complete repetitive tasks over and over again all day and night. Comparing that to the cost of raising children, genetically engineering them, and coercing them into working for you is just insane. The maths do not work out at all, never mind the fact that it would require a logistical marvel to actually make this happen, and you would require immense amounts of power to not be stopped.
From every single angle this just doesn't make any sense at all.
What if their parents are really proud of their red hair and then give their kid bright red hair that their kid wished they didn't have? It becomes weird when you can no longer point to luck for the reason you are a certain way, but instead have actual people that you can blame. And that becomes especially weird when you are talking about preferences that are not inherently good or bad, like height, hair or eye colour.