For all the benefits its promises, synthetic biology is potentially more dangerous than chemical or nuclear weaponry, since organisms can self-replicate, spread rapidly throughout the world, and mutate and evolve on their own...
So, how should we prioritize our research and life goals? …We could join George Mallory, who justified a huge and risky effort with the phrase “Because it’s there” — referring to Mount Everest where his body was lost, frozen in ice, for 75 years. But this is to blunder along blindly...
As a general goal I propose that, as a minimum, we ought to avoid the loss of all intelligent life in the universe.
The authors mention the singularity, and Singularity University, shortly after that, and they cite Good and Vinge and Kurzweil, but they ignore Yudkowsky and Singularity Institute.
Church & Regis, Regenesis: How Synthetic Biology Will Reinvent Nature and Ourselves.
Choice quote:
The authors mention the singularity, and Singularity University, shortly after that, and they cite Good and Vinge and Kurzweil, but they ignore Yudkowsky and Singularity Institute.