zlacker

Your argument could just as easily be applied to human cloning and argue for why human cloning and genetic engineering for specific desirable traits should not be illegal.

And it isn't a strong argument for the same reason that it isn't a good argument when used to argue we should allow human cloning and just focus on regulating the more direct causal links like non-clone employment loss from mass produced hyper-intelligent clones, and ensuring they have legal rights, and having proper oversight and non-clone human accountability.

Maybe those things could all make ethical human cloning viable. But I think the world coming together and being like "holy shit this is happening too fast. Our institutions aren't ready at all nor will they adapt fast enough. Global ban" was the right call.

It is not impossible that a similar call is also appropriate here with AI. I personally dunno what the right call is, but I'm pretty skeptical of any strong claim that it could never be the right call to outright ban some forms of advanced AI research just like we did with some forms of advanced genetic engineering research.

This isn't like banning numbers at all. The blame falling on the corner-cutters doesn't mean the right call is always to just tell the blamed not to cut corners. In some cases the right call is instead taking away their corner-cutting tool.

At least until our institutions can catch up.

>>DirkH+(OP)
I can get your example about eugenics. I get that the worry is that it would become pervasive due to social pressure and make the dominant position to do it. And that this would passively, gradually strip personhood away from those who didn’t receive it. There’s a tongue-in-cheek conversation to be had about how people already choose their mating partners this way and making it truly actually outright illegal might not really reflect the real processes of reality, but that’s a tad too cheeky perhaps.

But even then, that’s a linear diffusion- one person, one body mod. I guess you could say that their descendants would proliferate and multiply so the alteration slowly grows exponentially over the generations.. but the FUD I hear from AI decelerationists is that it would be an explosive diffusion of harms, like, as soon as the day after tomorrow. One architect, up to billions of victims, allegedly. Not that I think it’s unwise to be compelled to precaution with new and mighty technologies, but what is it that some people are so worried about that they’re willing to ban all research, and choke all the good that has come from them, already? Maybe it’s just a symptom of the underlying growing mistrust in the social contract..

>>pizza+wK
I mean, I imagine there are anti-genetic engineering FUD folks that go so far as to then say we should totally ban crispr cas9. I would caution against over-indexing on the take of only some AI decelerationists.

Totally agree we could be witnessing a growing mistrust in the social contract.