Maybe one thing to expect to see, is for a pod of orcas to reason from first principles that humans underestimate their intelligence. They might then realize they might avoid starvation by proving to humans they were intelligent, by doing a performance or something.
Sometimes humans save wild orcas, so it’s not unreasonable to expect this, at least for starving orca pods. The fact we’ve never seen this is a bad sign. They made no very coordinated attempts to communicate with us.
That said, there still may be a small chance of big implications. Maybe they appear unintelligent just like uncontacted tribespeople would appear unintelligent (especially if they had no hands). They might have slightly higher potential to learn things than humans, and have slight advantages somewhere, and that might still mean a lot.
Proving their intelligence to who? Who would even care? How likely is it that any coordinated action would be taken to save starving orcas? If its highly likely, is this fact legible to them?
It might seem to them that however many intelligent animals we’ve aided, we might just have harmed as many (intentionally or otherwise), or more.
Have humans ever taken large scale coordinated action to help an animal population that wasn’t redressing some harm done to them by humans?
Suppose you lived together with 10 family members in the wilderness. As you explore the world and hunt for food, you observe large shiny objects floating by above you, with mysterious little creatures standing on them looking down on you.
You’ve heard stories about these strange creatures. Your grandmother says that she was once trapped in a mudslide and thought she would die, but one of the shiny objects landed near her, and the creatures slowly dug her out. But she heard that another family far away was once attacked by these strange creatures, and most of them died.
Now suppose one year, there is no food anywhere, and you and your family start to starve to death. You see the mysterious shiny objects drift by overhead. What do you do?
It seems hard to believe that superintelligent orcas will reliably deduce, with 100% consistency, that the most reasonable action here is to completely ignore these shiny objects as you starve to death.
Maybe if AGI timelines were still > 100 years following this idea might have some merit, but we don’t have enough time left for ideas that would need multiple decades to see positive results, especially given that it’s unlikely we would get that many von Neumann/einstein-tier biological intelligence for research
I agree these biological intelligence directions are not that promising, but the world is big enough that even far shot ideas are worth a little bit exploration.
I think “How to Make Superbabies” is maybe a few times more promising than using orcas, but also maybe a few times more costly to evaluate.
Maybe one thing to expect to see, is for a pod of orcas to reason from first principles that humans underestimate their intelligence. They might then realize they might avoid starvation by proving to humans they were intelligent, by doing a performance or something.
Sometimes humans save wild orcas, so it’s not unreasonable to expect this, at least for starving orca pods. The fact we’ve never seen this is a bad sign. They made no very coordinated attempts to communicate with us.
That said, there still may be a small chance of big implications. Maybe they appear unintelligent just like uncontacted tribespeople would appear unintelligent (especially if they had no hands). They might have slightly higher potential to learn things than humans, and have slight advantages somewhere, and that might still mean a lot.
Proving their intelligence to who? Who would even care? How likely is it that any coordinated action would be taken to save starving orcas? If its highly likely, is this fact legible to them?
It might seem to them that however many intelligent animals we’ve aided, we might just have harmed as many (intentionally or otherwise), or more.
Have humans ever taken large scale coordinated action to help an animal population that wasn’t redressing some harm done to them by humans?
Suppose you lived together with 10 family members in the wilderness. As you explore the world and hunt for food, you observe large shiny objects floating by above you, with mysterious little creatures standing on them looking down on you.
You’ve heard stories about these strange creatures. Your grandmother says that she was once trapped in a mudslide and thought she would die, but one of the shiny objects landed near her, and the creatures slowly dug her out. But she heard that another family far away was once attacked by these strange creatures, and most of them died.
Now suppose one year, there is no food anywhere, and you and your family start to starve to death. You see the mysterious shiny objects drift by overhead. What do you do?
It seems hard to believe that superintelligent orcas will reliably deduce, with 100% consistency, that the most reasonable action here is to completely ignore these shiny objects as you starve to death.
Maybe if AGI timelines were still > 100 years following this idea might have some merit, but we don’t have enough time left for ideas that would need multiple decades to see positive results, especially given that it’s unlikely we would get that many von Neumann/einstein-tier biological intelligence for research
I agree these biological intelligence directions are not that promising, but the world is big enough that even far shot ideas are worth a little bit exploration.
I think “How to Make Superbabies” is maybe a few times more promising than using orcas, but also maybe a few times more costly to evaluate.