Given that this is still fairly underground with all the secret startups, contact Jonathan etc, how should this impact on deciding to do this sooner rather than later? From reading this, it seems like this is not particularly difficult to do in 2023, providing you know where to look, and will likely get easier in the next few years.
My concern is that as this becomes more widespread, sociopolitical pushback will cause it to become more difficult/costly/less effective, either through social pressure or regulation. You have mentioned already that companies have removed certain predictors; I suspect that this is just the beginning, and more obstacles will appear as this becomes more widely known among the public.
From this perspective, I would argue that people should plan to do this in the next few years, while it is comparatively unknown/unregulated.
I actually see things going the other way: about 30% of Americans already support gene editing for intelligence enhancement, and almost 50% support embyro selection. My prediction is this tech will gain widespread acceptance.
IVF was pretty unpopular when it first came out, but over time as people came to see that the children born via the process were normal, it became much more acceptable to the point where nowadays it’s kind of weird to view IVF as immoral.
Embryo selection for health, intelligence and happiness is completely consistent with our existing values. And it’s not scary in the way eugenics is because you don’t need top-down government control of reproduction for it to work.
If we just ignore AI for the moment (or assume progress slows down a lot due to regulations/restrictions), I predict the fight is going to shift towards cost and access. People are going to be upset that rich people are securing an advantage for their children that they can’t afford.
But regardless of whether it becomes popular or causes a backlash, it makes sense to freeze embryos NOW. Female age is the single biggest predictor of gain for a fixed price, so the sooner you go through the process the better.
Given that this is still fairly underground with all the secret startups, contact Jonathan etc, how should this impact on deciding to do this sooner rather than later? From reading this, it seems like this is not particularly difficult to do in 2023, providing you know where to look, and will likely get easier in the next few years.
My concern is that as this becomes more widespread, sociopolitical pushback will cause it to become more difficult/costly/less effective, either through social pressure or regulation. You have mentioned already that companies have removed certain predictors; I suspect that this is just the beginning, and more obstacles will appear as this becomes more widely known among the public.
From this perspective, I would argue that people should plan to do this in the next few years, while it is comparatively unknown/unregulated.
I actually see things going the other way: about 30% of Americans already support gene editing for intelligence enhancement, and almost 50% support embyro selection. My prediction is this tech will gain widespread acceptance.
IVF was pretty unpopular when it first came out, but over time as people came to see that the children born via the process were normal, it became much more acceptable to the point where nowadays it’s kind of weird to view IVF as immoral.
Embryo selection for health, intelligence and happiness is completely consistent with our existing values. And it’s not scary in the way eugenics is because you don’t need top-down government control of reproduction for it to work.
If we just ignore AI for the moment (or assume progress slows down a lot due to regulations/restrictions), I predict the fight is going to shift towards cost and access. People are going to be upset that rich people are securing an advantage for their children that they can’t afford.
But regardless of whether it becomes popular or causes a backlash, it makes sense to freeze embryos NOW. Female age is the single biggest predictor of gain for a fixed price, so the sooner you go through the process the better.