How smart can we get?

Question

One of the great problems in designing an Artificial Intelligence we can control is our own lack of sufficient intelligence. Partial failure here (success as designing an AI, failure at control) would result in a future where we're all dead or pets to greater beings at best.

It would be helpful if biological humans were smarter. Nick Bostrom discuses a cognitive-enhancement process through repeated genetic selection. He argues that if the heritable genetic characteristics of intelligence can be assessed by large-scale correlation studies, a 1 in 100 selection pressure (select the "best" out of 100) towards correlates of higher cognitive function repeated over 10 gamete (sperm + egg) generations can result in massive IQ boosts in the selected individuals (upwards of 100 IQ points total gain at the end of the selection process compared to the baseline - i.e. us).

If Bostrom's scenario is realistic, what would be the social implications of such a selective process if there were, say, 1% adoption of this method among the population? In other words, how smart can we get, and still retain a viable society?

Answer 1

I think that some governments might create a very secret, well controlled group of highly intelligent super-scientists who's jobs it would be to gain them tremendous advantages over their competition.

These people could be depended on to figure out issues which would otherwise take decades to research and understand, as well as design weapons systems, and other technologies which would put that that country ahead of everyone else.

The way in which you'd keep these people from effectively becoming our overlords is by keeping them on a tight leash. Indoctrinating them from birth seems like a logical first step, however anyone truly intelligent will likely outgrow their conditioning. At that point having a good-ol fashioned goon with a gun aimed at their head will help maintain control.

Even then, these people may very well figure out how to gain control. Depending on how they view the rest of us (insects to be crushed vs their disadvantaged cousins) they may or may not make better leaders than the ones we have today.

Answer 2

This would certainly increase the number of 'geniuses' that are produced rather significantly, and after a few more generations, redefine what we consider genius.

Many smart people are already looked on as odd frequently because of how they interact with others. Somewhere I read a quote that we can really only effectively communicate with people within a certain IQ range of our selves. I think it might 30 IQ points. So as you get people who are smarter and smarter they will by default tend to separate themselves from us (and us from them). We would have two separate societies emerging. Eventually they might take over governing us, since they would be smart enough to manipulate us like pets. Now if they became despotic, they would likely be overthrown and maybe wiped out, but being that much smarter than us, more likely they would take the road of benevolent dictators and making sure everyone is taken care of the the 'burden' placed on an one individual it 'relatively' light. If people are comfortable and occupied, they don't riot or resent (as much).

If the super intelligent don't flaunt their money and power, then there would be even less reason for discontent. Eventually they would likely get themselves a space vessel to leave us dirt diggers behind to our own devices.

Answer 3

The problem is in how we define "intelligence." If we limit it to "what is measured by IQ tests," then we can possibly increase this factor significantly, but at what cost. Note that many super-intelligent people are also very anti-social. Grigori Perelman is perhaps one of the most famous. Paul Erdos was friendly but eccentric. Thus, high IQ alone might not save us from the tyranny of AI, since the high-IQ individuals might not care a whit about that problem.

Today, our political leaders can hardly be considered the smartest in the pack. Even our CEOs tend towards sociopathy moreso than high IQ. So it is not exactly clear how high-IQ individuals would actually save us from the Robot Overlords, unless we employed them as defensive hackers in the NSA.