Currently, we have smart people who are using their intelligence mainly to push capabilities. If we want to grow superbabies into humans that aren’t just using their intelligence to push capabilities, it would be worth looking at which kind of personality traits might select for actually working on alignment in a productive fashion.
This might be about selecting genes that don’t correlate with psychopathy but there’s a potential that we can do much better than just not raising psychopaths. If you want to this project for the sake of AI safety, it would be crucial to look into what kind of personality that needs and what kind of genes are associated with that personality.
Currently, we have smart people who are using their intelligence mainly to push capabilities. If we want to grow superbabies into humans that aren’t just using their intelligence to push capabilities, it would be worth looking at which kind of personality traits might select for actually working on alignment in a productive fashion.
I think we need to think more broadly than this. There’s some set of human traits, which is a combination of the following:
Able to distinguish prosocial from antisocial things
Willing and able to take abstract ideas seriously
Long term planning ability
Desire to do good for their fellow humans (and perhaps just life more broadly)
Like, I’m essentially trying to describe the components of “is reliably drawn towards doing things that improve the lives of others”. I don’t think there’s much research on it in the literature. I haven’t seen a single article discuss what I’m referring to.
It’s not exactly altruism, at least not the naive kind. You want people that punish antisocial behavior to make society less vulnerable to exploitation.
Whatever this thing is, this is one of the main things that, at scale, would make the world a much, much better place.
I think superbabies would still have a massive positive impact on the world even if all we do is decrease disease risk and improve intelligence. But with this kind of thing I think the impact could be very robustly positive to an almost ridiculous degree.
My hope is as we scale operations and do more fundraising we can fund this kind of research.
Currently, we have smart people who are using their intelligence mainly to push capabilities. If we want to grow superbabies into humans that aren’t just using their intelligence to push capabilities, it would be worth looking at which kind of personality traits might select for actually working on alignment in a productive fashion.
This might be about selecting genes that don’t correlate with psychopathy but there’s a potential that we can do much better than just not raising psychopaths. If you want to this project for the sake of AI safety, it would be crucial to look into what kind of personality that needs and what kind of genes are associated with that personality.
I think we need to think more broadly than this. There’s some set of human traits, which is a combination of the following:
Able to distinguish prosocial from antisocial things
Willing and able to take abstract ideas seriously
Long term planning ability
Desire to do good for their fellow humans (and perhaps just life more broadly)
Like, I’m essentially trying to describe the components of “is reliably drawn towards doing things that improve the lives of others”. I don’t think there’s much research on it in the literature. I haven’t seen a single article discuss what I’m referring to.
It’s not exactly altruism, at least not the naive kind. You want people that punish antisocial behavior to make society less vulnerable to exploitation.
Whatever this thing is, this is one of the main things that, at scale, would make the world a much, much better place.
Do you have hope that someone else does the required research, so that it’s ready by the time the first superbabies are created?
If not, do you think it’s okay to create superintelligent babies without it?
I think superbabies would still have a massive positive impact on the world even if all we do is decrease disease risk and improve intelligence. But with this kind of thing I think the impact could be very robustly positive to an almost ridiculous degree.
My hope is as we scale operations and do more fundraising we can fund this kind of research.