How to prevent the coming inhuman future
How to prevent the coming inhuman future On stopping the worst excesses of AI, genetic engineering, and brain-tampering Erik Hoel Art for The Intrinsic Perspective is by Alexander Naughton “Of present dues: the future comes apace What shall defend the interim? and at length How goes our reckoning?” —Flavius, Timon of Athens by William Shakespeare There are a handful of obvious goals we should have for humanity’s longterm future, but the most ignored is simply making sure that humanity remains human . It’s what the average person on the street would care about, for sure. And yet it is missed by many of those working on longtermism, who are often effective altruists or rationalists or futurists (or some other label nearby to these), and who instead usually focus on ensuring economic progress, avoiding existential risk, and accelerating technologies like biotechnology and artificial intelligence—ironically, the very technologies that may make us unrecognizably inhuman and bring about